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Make KDE task switcher select a window on release of Alt+Tab

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Artyom Kovalyov

I've been using KDE for a long time.

Always when switching between windows with Alt+Tab it would select the window where I release both buttons.

The current behavior I have with KUbuntu 20.04 and Plasma 5.18.5 is to wait till I press Enter before finally switching to the selected window.

I checked all the options of the task switcher and haven't found how to reverse it to select on simply releasing both Alt and Tab.

Alt+Tab still works as expected when switching between 2 windows. For multiple windows it waits for me to press Enter which is annoying.

Hope for any advice to fix this soon.

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Artyom Kovalyov

The Answer is in custom changes to Xkb configuration. I usually adjust it with my own options to make sure my Emacs key bindings work as expected and some keys like Caps Lock are mapped to useful functions.

Somehow after the change, Meta and Alt keys ended up sharing the same keycode despite having a different modifier when printed by Xmodmap. This was the main source of confusion because this same configuration works fine on another KDE machine. To check for shared keycodes run:

xmodmap -pk | grep Alt
64         0xffe9 (Alt_L)  0xffe9 (Alt_L)  0xffe9 (Alt_L)  0xffe9 (Alt_L)
204         0x0000 (NoSymbol)       0xffe9 (Alt_L)  0x0000 (NoSymbol)       0xffe9 (Alt_L)

You'll see if Alt is sharing any of them with Meta or another modifier key. You then can work towards fixing your Xkb configuration to resolve this conflict. In my case, despite I applied my configuration last some previous steps somehow injected Meta key. You can check what options are applies by running:

setxkbmap -print -verbose 10
Setting verbose level to 10
locale is C
Trying to load rules file ./rules/evdev...
Trying to load rules file /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev...
Success.
Applied rules from evdev:
rules:      evdev
model:      pc101
layout:     us,ru
Trying to build keymap using the following components:
keycodes:   evdev+aliases(qwerty)
types:      complete
compat:     complete
symbols:    pc+us+ru:2+inet(evdev)
geometry:   pc(pc101)
xkb_keymap {
xkb_keycodes  { include "evdev+aliases(qwerty)" };
xkb_types     { include "complete"      };
xkb_compat    { include "complete"      };
xkb_symbols   { include "pc+us+ru:2+inet(evdev)"        };
xkb_geometry  { include "pc(pc101)"     };
};

To test your options run:

setxkbmap -option -option your-mods

Getting through Xkb configs is not a piece of cake. Try to use already available sets of options via system settings in KDE or applying them yourself after checking in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols. Look for altwin, compose, group to check what they do and how.

The names of the rules to apply you can find in: /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.lst

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