12

I recently installed Ubuntu 17.10, and when I tried to set my keyboard layout to change with alt+shift, I hit a well known bug. There is a workaround, using gnome-tweaks-tool which works, but then it creates an unwanted behaviour on Firefox (perhaps other programs as well).

After setting alt+shift through gnome-tweak-tool as the combination to change language, whenever this combination is pressed within Firefox, it triggers a toggle that Firefox uses to show/hide the Menu Bar (with File/Edit/View etc.), and 'focus' is taken away from wherever the cursor was.

It's very frustrating, because one has to go and click again at the cursor. The only solution I found was to permanently enable Menu Bar in Firefox because then alt doesn't do anything and I can use it to change languages. But I don't want to have Menu Bar on top always.

I hope you can understand what I'm trying to explain.

Any thoughts?

pomsky
  • 68,507
thomas
  • 123
  • 6
  • 1
    The bug does not seem to affect non-modifier keys. Can you choose a non-modifier key, and would that be an acceptable workaround for you? For example Menu. – Guildenstern Nov 07 '17 at 13:28
  • 2
    Thanks for your help. I didn't try, since one can simply avoid the menu 'focus' by simply using shift-alt instead of alt-shift (i.e. pressing shift first, then alt). – thomas Nov 10 '17 at 14:22
  • Similar issue is here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/908144/firefox-ubuntu-gnome-alt-conflict-with-input-method-and-hud?rq=1 – user502144 Nov 20 '17 at 19:54

2 Answers2

6

Use shift+alt (i.e. shift before alt) in Firefox.

pomsky
  • 68,507
  • 2
    Thanks pomsky - it worked! .. Such a simple solution.

    Now all I have to do it to reprogram my hand not to use alt-shift :)

    PS - I tried to vote 'up' as the solution is good, but I can't, probably because I dont have enough 'reputation'.

     – thomas Nov 10 '17 at 14:20
2

I have the same issue with slack, after some digging found out that there is another way to change the keyboard layout w/o using gnome-tweak-tool which wont cause this side effect of losing the focus.

The solution is to use gsettings as explained here

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-input-source "['<Shift>Alt_L']"
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-input-source-backward "['<Alt>Shift_L']"
pomsky
  • 68,507
Todor
  • 2,368