Systemsettings: navigate (and enable Mouse Nagivation) with a keyboard only

General
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1

Today, I decided to disassemble my Logitech MX Ergo trackball and clean it. When some parts were drying, I wanted to use my PC. To ease this, I tried to enable the Mouse Navigation feature (which makes the keypad emulate a mouse). I used to do this back in the days when the system settings panel was made in QtWidgets.

However, enabling this functionality – and making many different changes – seems impossible without a mouse in the new QtQuick/QML/whatever sidebar-oriented system settings application. No matter what keys I was pressing (arrows, tab, page up…; mnemonics), I could not enter the Mouse Navigation menu. I could only switch between the elements in the primary sidebar (and choose the Accessibility option) and the Help button, but there was no option to switch between submenus in the secondary sidebar or items in the opened page (System Bell in this case).

Am I out of touch with how to windows used to be operated with keyboard only or does the new System Settings app not really support using it this way (and thus I should file a bug)?

Regards.

2 Likes
2

What is your system info? Possible there is a bug in your version.

Works here:

  • Using Arrow Keys to select Accessibility
  • Enter
  • Tab
  • Select Mouse Navigation using the Arrow Keys
  • Tab to select “use numepad to select move cursor”
  • Space to activate
  • Hit a couple times tab and then Enter to Apply the setting
Operating System: Arch Linux 
KDE Plasma Version: 6.4.80
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.16.0
Qt Version: 6.9.1
Kernel Version: 6.14.10-arch1-1 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
3

Huh, I can reproduce on Fedora KDE.

Operating System: Fedora Linux 42
KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.14.0
Qt Version: 6.9.0
Kernel Version: 6.14.9-300.fc42.x86_64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland

4

You made me login to my 6.3.5 session :stuck_out_tongue: . I can reproduce there aswell. But its fixed on my git session. So hopefully also with the upcoming 6.4. release

5

6.3.5 here too:

Operating System: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20250606
KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.14.0
Qt Version: 6.9.1
Kernel Version: 6.14.0-1-default (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 24 × AMD Ryzen 9 7900 12-Core Processor
Memory: 30.5 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor 1: AMD Radeon Pro W5500
Graphics Processor 2: AMD Radeon Graphics
6

Yep, looks like 433571 – Accessibility-Activating Keypad mouse control requires a mouse , which indeed must have been fixed as mentioned there in between 6.3.5 and the current dev version.

7

I got my trackball for a more intense cleaning. This time I enabled Mouse Nagivation before the disassembly. To my surprise… it doesn’t work. Whether Num Lock is on or off doesn’t matter. A reboot also changes nothing.

8

Ah, I didn’t realize that the feature working at all on Wayland was also in progress - that’s set for release with Plasma 6.4, though: 478620 – Mouse navigation with numpad doesn't work under Wayland