HUD/Dash refuses to close

[Chris J Arges]

I was running chromium, a VM, IRC and a gnome-terminal. At some point, I hit the 'Alt' key and the HUD popped up, and it didn't go away.

Running with quantal.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
Package: unity 6.0.0-0ubuntu6
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-9.9-generic 3.5.0
Uname: Linux 3.5.0-9-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.4-0ubuntu6
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Aug 14 16:53:08 2012
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Alpha amd64 (20120626.1)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: unity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

When you say "it didn't go away", do you mean that tapping Alt or Escape does not close the HUD?

[Chris J Arges (arges)]

Correct, tapping Alt or Escape it would not go away. I had to do 'unity --replace' for it to finally go away.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Confirmed with Unity 6.2 today.

The dash refuses to close but also functions normally. Launched apps open behind the dash and I can interact with the panel menus too. But no matter what I do I can't close the dash.

[Brandon Schaefer (brandontschaefer)]

@Daniel
Was there a way you were able to reproduce this? I can't get the Dash or Hud to be stuck ... I can't reproduce this,

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Sorry Brandon. I have no idea how to reproduce it again.

[Chris J Arges (arges)]

I know I was running virtual machine manager at the time, so I'm not sure if that is related.

[Arpan Chakraborty (napratin)]

I'm running Ubuntu 12.10 with Unity 6.6.0, and I have faced this problem as well. I can confirm that I was too running a virtual machine, when this happened. Specifically, I was running a Ubuntu 12.04 VirtualBox image (set to not exclusively capture keyboard and mouse). One behavior I noticed was that tapping the Super or Alt key would open up both the host's and guest's Dash or HUD, respectively. This is somewhat expected, I guess, but sometimes annoying.

I did not notice exactly when the host's HUD became permanently visible, but it has stayed there even after I closed the VM. Attached screenshot shows that the HUD is as if painted on the screen, but not really alive, i.e. I cannot type anything into or close it by tapping Alt (strangely, the cursor even blinks sometimes). Elements from other windows (in this case a terminal) get drawn on top of the HUD, and then sometimes the HUD gets drawn on top (typically when the other window loses focus).

I haven't experienced any such problem with the Dash.

[Brandon Schaefer (brandontschaefer)]

Hmm I just got this as well when press Super quickly to open/close the Dash...but then the dash keeps getting drawn (As you notice the panel doesn't think an overlay is open). So it seems like it loses track of the state somewhere....(Ill blame ubus!)

[Raphaël Heiss (almire)]

Running 12.10 beta here and the prompt is unresponsive and won't go away.
I'm not running a virtual machine, if this can help.

[Leif Johnson (lmjohns3)]

I just ran across this bug too. (I changed the HUD hotkey to the windows key on my US keyboard, if that matters.) It seems like a more-or-less reliable method of triggering the bug is to press the hotkey very quickly -- the "Type your command" HUD appears briefly, then gets covered up by the larger HUD showing application icons etc. Pressing escape removes the larger HUD, but the "Type your command" HUD remains and seems insensitive to keypresses or mouse clicks. Pressing the HUD hotkey for a longer period of time seems to clear everything out.

[wb8nbs (wb8nbs)]

I am seeing this behavior also. The computer is an Asus N56VJ laptop and it happens sometimes when I touch the large pad in multiple places.. I hit the left windows key twice and it goes away.

[Stephen (ste13)]

I encountered this problem when I pressed alt by mistake. The Dash wouldn't go away and stayed on top of my Firefox window. I pressed alt again and it went away. Now I can no longer repeat the problem.

[drummerduncan (duschulze)]

I had this problem when I assigned the windows key to "Key to show HUD". I found that disabling the shortcut altogether fixed the problem.

[Brandon Schaefer (brandontschaefer)]

I've not seen this happen for sometime and I cant reproduce the issue. If anyone here still experiences this please mark this accordingly.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for unity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]