Support both Super keys simultaneously on org.gnome.mutter overlay-key

[Jora Sucharik]

The right super key doesn't show the overlay.

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please execute the following command, as it will automatically gather debugging information, in a terminal:

  apport-collect 1880411

When reporting bugs in the future please use apport by using 'ubuntu-bug' and the name of the package affected. You can learn more about this functionality at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

There is no "right super key". The key on the right side is for opening context menus.

[Jora Sucharik (c3374610)]

Here is it. I put a red circle on it so you can find it better.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thanks for the screenshot. That's just a bug in gnome-control-center giving it the wrong label.

The "Super R" key is actually called "Compose" by the kernel, and it is called "Menu" by gnome-shell. That key is not meant to open the overview.

[Jora Sucharik (c3374610)]

It's looks like that this is a mutter thing. If I understand that correctly from a short gsettings dig, you can set only one key as overlay-key, not a combo, not several separate keys.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Yes the feature you want is a mutter/gnome-shell thing, but that's not a bug. The only bug here is in the gnome-control-center GUI.

[Jora Sucharik (c3374610)]

I disagree with you Daniel. So far I know, Gnome doesn't have a default compose key. Of course you can set it with gnome-tweaks, but for all keybinding this one is <SuperR>. May be you restore the original issue name and move it to mutter?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Done. Though the original issue is invalid, not a bug.

If you disagree then please explain why.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Can we assign this to gnome-tweaks, since that's what calls it "Right Super" ?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Looking at the source code of gnome-tweaks it is trying to set:

  gsettings set org.gnome.mutter overlay-key 'Super_R'

which is a mistake. Because the correct setting to get it working is:

  gsettings set org.gnome.mutter overlay-key 'menu'

So it's just a bug in gnome-tweaks.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Please report the problem to gnome-tweaks here:

  https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-tweaks/-/issues

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

The latest problem description on this bug report seems oversimplified to me. Let me add some more input:

On my physical keyboard I have the following keys to the right of the space key:

 AltGr
 Page Up
 Page Down
 Right Ctrl

With the English (US) layout active, the "Show Keyboard Layout" option says:

 Alt R
 Super R
 Menu
 Control R

So the g-c-c feature correctly identifies the first and the last of those keys, and randomly sets the label "Super R" respective "Menu" on two 'unexpected' keys.

If I define e.g. Right Ctrl as the Compose key, this is the g-c-c output:

 Alt R
 Super R
 Menu
 Compose

So it labels my compose key correctly, but still have those incorrect "Super R" and "Menu".

[Jora Sucharik (c3374610)]

Okay, there is no issue with gnome-tweaks. It does what it supposed to do. In Keyboard & Mouse -> Overview is a toggle button to select either Left Super or Right Super. What it does is being a wrapper around gsettings set org.gnome.mutter.overlay-key for 'Super_L' or 'Super_R' values. Both options work well. But you can have only one of them at the same time. So my problem is with mutter. Mutter doesn't accept multiple values for the overlay-key. It must be one single key, but you can set it to everything you want.

Naming issue. My hardware keyboard has a common German layout, the keys left from space bar are: Alt Gr, ⊞ aka windows key, ≣ menu key, Strg aka ctrl. The windows key is super. There are two of them on the keyboard: one left, one right. If I look for X events with 'xev -event keyboard' I see that that windows keys are named Super_L and Super_R. Gnome folks name them as Super_L and Super_R. I am d'accord with them.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Oh, sorry. I had to Google "German keyboard layout" to see that keyboards with two Super keys do exist. I have never seen that before.

If you just want support for multiple simultaneous keys on the same action then I will make this bug about that...

[Jora Sucharik (c3374610)]

Yes, thanks for adding this to mutter's gitlab issue tracker.

[Jordi2019 (jordi2019)]

It happens the same with the Spanish (International) layout.

This is a highly requested feature!

[Ladar Levison (kingladar)]

I didn't see anybody post this workaround yet, but on my systems, it's possible to get the desired functionality, if you make the config change using the command line. This bug is still relevant though, as its impossible to make the same change using any of the GUI tools.

Pick one of the following commands. Just pick whichever method tickles your inputs the most:

# Make the change with gsettings...
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.keybindings toggle-overview "['<Super>s','Super_R']"

# Or if you are using a more recent release, make the change using dconf write.
dconf write /org/gnome/shell/keybindings/toggle-overview "['<Super>s','Super_R']"

# Finally, if you prefer to use docnf load (good scripts making lots of changes):
dconf load -f /org/gnome/shell/ <<-EOF
[keybindings]
toggle-overview=['<Super>s', 'Super_R']
EOF

[Daniel Arndt (danielarndt)]

Thanks Ladar, that workaround works great for me. Exactly what I needed.

I have a keyboard that _only_ has a right meta key that I often plug in to my laptop (Kinesis Advantage). My laptop, however, _only_ has a left meta key.