GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 712541
gdm3 loses keyboard focus irretrievably when resuming from screensaver
Last modified: 2014-07-14 21:28:56 UTC
If you do not log in immediately in gdm3, after some time you are presented with a screensaver that shows the current date and time. You can press Escape to exit out of the screensaver, however when you do you lose all keyboard focus and cannot use the keyboard to log in or otherwise navigate the login screen. When you press Escape to exit from the screensaver screen, keyboard focus should be placed on the login controls, you should be able to Tab and Shift-Tab to move between focusable components, etc. This is really basic accessibility stuff.
I can confirm this. This is a long standing bug since 3.8.x.
I'm sorry. I forgot to mention that this is not only a issue of convenience. I never found a way to get input focus again without using a pointing device (touchpad, mouse). So a system without a mouse gets not longer usable for users which are not able to manually restart gdm from a TTY.
This issue is still present with version 3.12. I'd like to reemphasise that this is a huge drawback for accessibility ! Some people have a hard time operating pointer-devices and need to minimize arm movement !
So will get it fixed eventually ?
I think this issue has been fixed. . .more than once. Needs debugging to fix it this time I guess. For now, let me move it to the correct component in bugzilla
Created attachment 276581 [details] [review] reset the login window In my test, the focus is still on the shield when we lift it in gdm. (3.12) The patch emits the 'active-changed' in this case and the login dialog keep track of this signal to get the focus back.
This issue has been fixed more than once?! :) Interesting statement. Does it means, bugs come and go freely during development process? Please, try improving versioning. It may help. I get bored "often" when logging into my Gnome 3.10. If this report is in fact a duplicate, than please, link it to the actual one, or change STATUS to CONFIRMED, please.
This bug sustains at least since 3.6
Although this bug report is pretty old now (and it seems to have 4 duplicates, #701518, #731637, #733014 and #708105), there *is* a solution, although not documented. You may press Ctrl-Alt-Tab to cycle between login screen elements, including the top bar. This, however, is only a workaround, I hope someone fixes this issue soon. It is actually around since at least 3.6.
Thanks for the bug report. This particular bug has already been reported into our bug tracking system, but please feel free to report any further bugs you find. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 708105 ***