GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 728543
Meta keys no longer work after 3.12 update
Last modified: 2014-04-27 07:35:48 UTC
After updating to Gnome 3.12 I can no longer perform certain keyboard shortcuts using tmux or emacs, for example. So far I've noticed that the following tmux keybindings are broken (from tmux's ^b-?): bind-key M-1 select-layout even-horizontal bind-key M-2 select-layout even-vertical bind-key M-3 select-layout main-horizontal bind-key M-4 select-layout main-vertical bind-key M-5 select-layout tiled For example, ^b M-2 used to perform the `select-layout even-vertical' tmux command. Now it seems to be being intercepted by gnome-shell or gnome-terminal or something because tmux never sees it... I've tried re-binding the tmux prefix key to something else and that doesn't help, so it has something to do with the Meta-<Number Key> combination. Another good way of reproducing the issue is by running `emacs -Q -nw' in gnome-terminal and doing: `C-h k M-2' (or `M-x describe-key <RET> M-2'). You should see that emacs doesn't ever notice that you hit M-2. Earlier versions of would let that through. Also tested in xterm and the M-2 gets through. Tried on two different machines. In both cases, the bad behavior started happening immediately after updating to 3.12.
Likely dup of bug 728121.
Just as the other bug, this one is also caused by a319aeb66f36e728af1b4929ddd69574df838702. Previous behavior: Alt+<n> used to switch to the <n>th tab if there were at least n tabs open, otherwise it fell back to sending ESC <n> to the terminal. E.g. with 3 open tabs, Alt+3 switched to the 3rd tab, while Alt+4 emitted ^[4. New behavior: Whatever is specified under Preferences->Shortcuts, without fallback. That is, assuming the default settings and 3 open tabs, Alt+3 switches to the 4th tab, while Alt+4 does nothing. The previous behavior didn't make too much sense to me, e.g. if you ever use Alt+4 in Emacs, it should work indepedently from the number of tabs opened. Mitch: You can disable these shortcuts under prefs, that'll probably get you to your preferred behavior. I'm really not sure what would be the best default behavior. Maybe switch these shortcuts to Ctrl+Alt+<n> (similarly to Ctrl+Alt+T which is Ctrl+T in almost every other app)?
... err, that's Ctrl+Shift+T for new tab. Anyway. Ctrl+Alt+<n> or Ctrl+Shift+<n> could also work I guess. Maybe Alt+Shift+<n> too, although Alt+Shift is probably the most common keyboard layout switching shortcut and that could cause problems.
> Mitch: You can disable these shortcuts under prefs, that'll probably get you to your preferred behavior. Works, thanks!
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 728121 ***