Why, And How, My Mouse And Keyboard Suddenly Switched Roles

[rokejulianlockhart]

When authoring bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=395151#c90, I noticed that I had become unable to type there, and that my mouse’s scroll wheel would bring me back and forth between pages. Thereafter, even with FF closed, “s” would (generally) type in plasmoids, but “d” would not, and “a” would immediately select and click the nearest button:

A Screencast, Which Demonstrates That My Mouse And Keyboard Switched Roles

I mention that URI not merely because it was when this most obviously reproduced, but because, in retrospect, I was solely interested in that bug because I was unable to switch the undermentioned toggle:

…which, since the qdbus-qt6 org.kde.Shutdown /Shutdown org.kde.Shutdown.logout (and log-back-in) that remediated the keyboard-mouse switch-around, has also been remediated.

Why, and how, did my keyboard become a mouse, and my mouse become a keyboard?

My Environment

Operating System: Fedora Linux 44
KDE Plasma Version: 6.6.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.26.0
Qt Version: 6.11.1
Kernel Version: 7.0.10-201.fc44.x86_64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 12 × AMD Ryzen 5 7600X 6-Core Processor
Memory: 32 GiB of RAM (30.4 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor 1: AMD Radeon RX 5700
Graphics Processor 2: AMD Ryzen 5 7600X 6-Core Processor
Manufacturer: ASRock
Product Name: X670E Taichi

[aguzinski]

Weird…

Do you use any input remapping software that might have been malfunctioning?

Did this only happen once, or can you reproduce it?

One thing that occasionally happened to me was that a modifier key gets “stuck” in software, thereby triggering shortcuts / mouse gestures with other keys (fixable by switching to a tty and back), but I’m not sure any modifier would cause that exact behaviour.

and “a” would immediately select and click the nearest button

Unless it found the button accidentally, this one sounds like some kind of accessibility feature to me.

[rokejulianlockhart]

@aguzinski

Did this only happen once, or can you reproduce it?

@aguzinski, not thus far. It affects the same keys that t/47518 does (which is reproducible), but that’s definitely not the cause.

@aguzinski

Unless it found the button accidentally, this one sounds like some kind of accessibility feature to me.

I agree. I wonder whether a global list of shortcuts exists, so that I can ascertain whether I accidentally enabled an accessibility feature.

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@aguzinski

One thing that occasionally happened to me was that a modifier key gets “stuck” in software, thereby triggering shortcuts / mouse gestures with other keys (fixable by switching to a tty and back), but I’m not sure any modifier would cause that exact behaviour.

I’ve experienced similar, if of any use:

VsCode keeps typing like the key has not been released

[aguzinski]

@rokejulianlockhart

I agree. I wonder whether a global list of shortcuts exists, so that I can ascertain whether I accidentally enabled an accessibility feature.

The closest thing seems to be ~/.config/kglobalshortcutsrc

[rokejulianlockhart]

Albeit mostly irrelevant, my gosh has that sent me down a tangent:

`xdg-open`, in `pwsh`, in `warp-terminal-preview-v0.2026.05.27.15.44.preview_01-1`, causes `code-insiders` to fail to resolve the shell environment, due to an unexpected exit code of `null` (and `SigAbrt`).