Unable to exit Activities Overview in Ubuntu 21.04

[PJSingh5000]

In Ubuntu 21.04, after entering the Activities Overview by clicking on Activities, by using the hot corner, or by pressing the Super key, the user is not able to exit the Activities Overview and return to the Desktop.

The user can still open or close applications, or move applications to different work spaces, but the user can not interact with open applications or return to the normal GNOME desktop.

This issue occurs randomly.

The only remedy is to logout, restart gnome shell with Alt-F2, R if using Xorg.

This affects:
    Ubuntu 21.04
    gnome-shell 3.38.4-1ubuntu2

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 21.04
Package: gnome-shell 3.38.4-1ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.11.0-16.17-generic 5.11.12
Uname: Linux 5.11.0-16-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu65
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: pass
CurrentDesktop: Ubuntu-Blue:ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sat May 1 21:37:12 2021
DisplayManager: gdm3
InstallationDate: Installed on 2021-04-28 (3 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 21.04.0 2021.04.27 amd64 "Custom Hirsute Hippo" (20210427)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
RelatedPackageVersions: mutter-common 3.38.4-1ubuntu2
SourcePackage: gnome-shell
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 1922353, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.

[pj (notpj)]

when opening thunderbird, if i leave it open for a time, go do something else and come back and close thunderbird, one red dot remains for open thunderbird, if i click on thunderbird icon the black box appears and it stays there until i log out and back in. i cannot restart thunderbird until i log out/in.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

I think comment #4 is describing bug 1932328.

[Benjamin Cserveny (bcserven)]

How can I change from Wayland to Xorg if it doesn't appear as an option on my login screen? I am currently unable to exit this view and I can't seem to find any alternative ways of doing so.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Comment #6 doesn't appear to be directly relevant to this bug. But most likely if you don't have the option to log into a Wayland session then you're probably using Nvidia and need to add the kernel parameter: nvidia-drm.modeset=1