Gnome on-screen keyboard doesn't appear when a text field is focused

[Francois Gouget]

After installing ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso the on-screen keyboard was working as expected: the on-screen keyboard would come up as soon as the focus was in a gnome-terminal or gedit window.

But after upgrading gnome-shell from 3.28.1-0ubuntu2 to 3.28.3-0ubuntu0.18.04.2 the on-screen keyboard stopped coming up when focusing a gnome-terminal or gedit window. The only place (I found) where the on-screen keyboard still comes up is in the text fields of the shell such as the search field in the gnome overview.

Details:
* The on-screen keyboard was explicitly enabled in accessibility.
* None of the caribou and onboard packages are installed.
* Only two packages were upgraded between the working and broken configurations:
  gnome-shell 3.28.1-0ubuntu2 ---> 3.28.3-0ubuntu0.18.04.2
  gnome-shell-common 3.28.1-0ubuntu2 ---> 3.28.3-0ubuntu0.18.04.2
* Bug #1589240 is similar but very old and was closed with instructions to reopen a new bug if needed.
* The test environment is a VMware VM which does have a "real" keyboard and does not have a touchscreen. I don't think that justifies the change in behavior, particularly given the inconsistency between gnome-shell's text fields and the others.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

I can confirm this. Possibly a duplicate of bug #1760399 and bug #1791551.

Worth mentioning too that there are other issues with the OSK on Ubuntu (bug #1761554).

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Yes, there are probably enough pre-existing reports like this. Please choose an existing bug to merge this into:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell/+bugs?field.tag=osk

[Francois Gouget (fgouget)]

I don't see any bug that this one could be merged into:

Bug #1761554 [bionic] Extended characters in GNOME screen keyboard don't get entered gnome-shell (Ubuntu) 18
Bug #1691677 gnome-shell on-screen keyboard has no Esc Ctrl or Alt keys gnome-shell (Ubuntu) 6
Bug #1698515 On screen keyboard stays English even after changing language to Finnish gnome-shell (Ubuntu) 6
Bug #1772606 gnome-shell onscreen keyboard types wrong characters gnome-shell (Ubuntu) 6

These are obviously not related.

Bug #1741843 caribou (gnome-shell osk): special characters not working gnome-shell (Ubuntu) 6

The present bug is not about Caribou.

Bug #1721319 On-screen keyboard pops up with touchscreen even when physical keyboard present gnome-shell (Ubuntu) 22

This bug is specific to touchscreen configurations which is not the case of the present bug. Also it's about the on-screen keyboard popping up too often which is the opposite of the issue here.

Bug #1760399 New On-screen keyboard cannot be manually triggered to appear gnome-shell (Ubuntu) 50

This is about having a button or command line tool to pop up the on-sreen keyboard. While I agree a button or command line tool would be useful this is not related to the present bug.
In comment #6 Mario Vukelic does complain that the on-screen keyboard does not pop up when it should but that's off-topic for that bug so merging the present bug there would only confuse the issue. He also comments that this seems fixed in Gnome 3.30 but that does not help Ubuntu 18.04 ***LTS*** which only has Gnome 3.28.

Bug #1791551 Activation of new on-screen keyboard in Gnome 3.28/3.30 is difficult to discover in Wayland and not possible in X gnome-shell (Ubuntu) 46

This is the closest bug but it's mixing up issues with Wayland vs. X, behavior differences with touchscreens vs. enabling the on-screen keyboard in accessibility, and appears to be more related to 18.10 whereas the present bug is specifically about a regression in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

I think we should use bug 1791551 until proven otherwise.