This sat at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=503001 for 3+ years, so moving to the upstream tracker. Original reporter was Stefan Assmann sassmann@redhat.com

Description of problem:
Virt-manager uses the keyboard shortcut ctrl+alt to toggle inside/outside the VM (aka release pointer). Now Gnome uses ctrl+alt+arrow_key to switch virtual desktops. So these two shortcuts collide and virt-manager will grab the key presses as soon as ctrl+alt is pressed and toogle inside/outside the VM, which makes switching desktops impossible.

There should be at least 2 ways to get this working.

Solution 1 (more elegant but probably more complex):
Do not immediately take action on key-down press event, instead wait for another key to be pressed besides ctrl+alt (i.e. ctrl+alt+left) and react on that. Otherwise if only ctrl+alt is pressed and the keys are released trigger on that event to do the actual toggle inside/outside VM. (Note: when outside the VM ctrl+alt+<something> should be handled by the windowmanager)

Benefit of this approach: All ctrl+alt+<something> keyboard shortcuts should work, no more need for "ctrl+alt+<something> send keys". This should also allow to switch virtual desktops inside and outside of a VM.


Solution 2 (less intrusive and easier to accomplish):
Just check whether currently inside or outside of the VM and pass ctrl+alt+<something> to the window manager if outside.

Benefit of this approach: Allow switching of virtual desktops outside of VM. Should be easier to accomplish without having looked at the actual code.


I'd prefer getting Solution 1 to work without knowing how much effort that would cost. Thanks for considering, I'll try to help out on this as good as I can.