Some shell elements don't respond to touchscreen in Xorg sessions

[theofficialgman]

Starting in GNOME 46 touchscreen input on the X11 session has become unusable

the touchscreen is responsive on the desktop itself (moving the cursor) but does not interact with most things

on GNOME 46 on the current version of Ubuntu Noble, touch input does NOT work with:
- On screen keyboard (touch is registered but no keystrokes get input)
- clicking options in gnome appindicators (indicators can be opened but clicking any option does nothing)
- interacting with application overview (cannot press left and right buttons or search bar)
- selecting textboxs
- any of the touch gestures (eg: swipe up from bottom to bringup keyboard)

All of the above worked just fine on GNOME 45 on Ubuntu Mantic (and Ubuntu Noble from March and earlier before it was "upgraded" to GNOME 46).

Tested on a fresh image as well as an old image from February running GNOME 45 upgraded to the latest packages with GNOME 46
---
ProblemType: Bug
ApportVersion: 2.28.1-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: unknown
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu
DisplayManager: sddm
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 24.04
InstallationDate: Installed on 2021-06-21 (1035 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 20.04.2.0 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Release amd64 (20210209.1)
Package: xorg-server
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 TERM=xterm-256color
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 6.8.0-28.28-generic 6.8.1
RebootRequiredPkgs: Error: path contained symlinks.
RelatedPackageVersions: mutter-common 46.0-1ubuntu7
Tags: noble
Uname: Linux 6.8.0-28-generic x86_64
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to noble on 2024-04-21 (0 days ago)
UserGroups: adm cdrom dip lpadmin lxd plugdev render sambashare sudo
_MarkForUpload: True
---
ProblemType: Bug
ApportVersion: 2.28.1-0ubuntu2
Architecture: arm64
CasperMD5CheckResult: unknown
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
DisplayManager: gdm3
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 24.04
Package: xorg-server
PackageArchitecture: arm64
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 TERM=xterm-256color
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
RelatedPackageVersions: mutter-common 46.0-1ubuntu7
Tags: noble third-party-packages
Uname: Linux 4.9.140-l4t aarch64
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups: adm audio cdrom dip gdm lpadmin plugdev sambashare sudo users video weston-launch
_MarkForUpload: True

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

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

  apport-collect 2063005

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)]

Partially confirmed. It looks like the onscreen keyboard is always disabled by default. You have to enable it in:

 Settings > Accessibility > Typing > Screen Keyboard = ON

After I did that, all the features mentioned here started working.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Looks like it's been disabled for at least 6 years:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gsettings-desktop-schemas/-/blob/master/schemas/org.gnome.desktop.a11y.applications.gschema.xml.in?ref_type=heads

so whether or not it gets toggled automatically is probably up to gnome-shell.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Sorry, I missed the "X11 session" part. Bug confirmed.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Previously reported in bug 2029416 but since that release is deprecated we will track it here.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[theofficialgman (theofficialgman)]

apport information

[theofficialgman (theofficialgman)]

apport information

[theofficialgman (theofficialgman)]

apport information

[theofficialgman (theofficialgman)]

apport information

[theofficialgman (theofficialgman)]

apport information

[theofficialgman (theofficialgman)]

I've confirmed the issue on multiple devices with touchscreen now (x86_64 laptop with touchscreen and an ARM64 tablet with touchscreen)

The attached info above is from the x86_64 laptop.

[theofficialgman (theofficialgman)]

apport information

[theofficialgman (theofficialgman)]

apport information

[theofficialgman (theofficialgman)]

apport information

[theofficialgman (theofficialgman)]

apport information

[theofficialgman (theofficialgman)]

apport information

[theofficialgman (theofficialgman)]

the attached info above are from the ARM64 tablet

[theofficialgman (theofficialgman)]

I have filed an upstream bug since this seems to be going nowhere currently https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/7626

[theofficialgman (theofficialgman)]

Daniel, a user has bisected and confirmed the bug in mutter (see linked bug report). I have removed the affects from gnome-shell because of this.

[Austin Thomas (austin-thomas-mlb)]

Is there a known workaround for this bug? I've found that holding an additional finger on the screen before pressing an element will sometimes work.

[theofficialgman (theofficialgman)]

No know workaround other than using another desktop environment that doesn't use mutter (such as KDE plasma).

[Arun (kgarun)]

Any workarounds?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Fix proposed: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/4322

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package mutter - 48~rc-4ubuntu2

---------------
mutter (48~rc-4ubuntu2) plucky; urgency=medium

  * Refresh seat-impl-Initialize-the-impl-reverse-pointer-slightly-ea.patch
  * Add tests-Mark-wayland-unit-as-flaky.patch to avoid spurious Launchpad
    build failures that blocked the previous 48~rc-ubuntu tags.

 -- Daniel van Vugt <email address hidden> Fri, 14 Mar 2025 17:52:01 +0800