Mouse wheel no longer switches virtual desktop

suse_rasputin · September 23, 2017, 8:29pm

Hi!Have a TW 64 bit with KDE, updated to the latest. Up to one of the latest updates the “mouse wheel” (actually it’s a trackball, but …) switched between the 4 virtual desktops, as long as the mouse pointer was on the desktop (not an application window), Now not any more, nothing happenz if the mouse wheel is moved. Changing trackball vs. a Dell mouse doesn’t change anything.Had a look at the “System Settings” → “Desktop Behaviour” → “Virtual Desktops” → “Switching”, but nothing different to another TW where the mouse wheel switch still works. Btw. recently the look of the “System Settings” menu changed dramatically, the icons are no longer distributed over the Window, but all located to the left.Any idea why the mouse wheel has stopped working and how to make it work again?

nrickert · September 23, 2017, 9:29pm

That’s the wrong setting.

Right click on desktop. Select “Configure Desktop”.

Look for “Mouse Actions” in the left margin, and click that.

Look for scroll wheel. Set it to “Switch Desktops”.

That works here. I normally have it set to “Switch Activities”. But I changed to “Switch Desktops” for testing.

suse_rasputin · September 23, 2017, 9:48pm

Thanks!Forgot: Tried that too! With both, the mouse and the trackball. Can even detect the “Vertical-Scroll” as input, but no matter which operation I choose, nothing happens, after pressing “Apply”. Strange. So the wheel is detected, but nothing happens subsequently.

deano_ferrari · September 23, 2017, 11:31pm

I don’t normally make such configurations, but my experience with openSUSE 42.3 (KDE Plasma 5) matches yours. After little investigation I found that the changes are made to the ‘[ActionsPlugins][0]’ section of ~/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc eg

[ActionPlugins][0]
MidButton;NoModifier=org.kde.paste
RightButton;NoModifier=org.kde.contextmenu
wheel:Vertical;NoModifier=org.kde.switchdesktop

and don’t appear to take effect.

I then found the following discussion_about_switching_workspaces_with_mouse and added the required entry

wheel:Vertical;NoModifier=org.kde.switchdesktop

to ‘[ActionsPlugins][1]’ section like this and then the desired action it did take effect immediately.

Hopefully this helps you too.

deano_ferrari · September 24, 2017, 12:03am

Hmmm…a bit more experimenting and I found that the initial changes did take effect after restarting the desktop…anyway check what is configured in ~/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc perhaps…

[ActionPlugins][0]
MidButton;NoModifier=org.kde.paste
RightButton;NoModifier=org.kde.contextmenu
wheel:Vertical;NoModifier=org.kde.switchdesktop

suse_rasputin · September 24, 2017, 7:16pm

Hi again!

Had a long dd-job running, but now back on topic:

[ActionPlugins][1]
RightButton;NoModifier=org.kde.contextmenu
wheel:Vertical;NoModifier=org.kde.switchdesktop

…has been added. Reboot. No change. But: If I hover the mouse pointer over the symbol of the 4 virtual desktops in the task bar, the mouse wheel switches the virtual desktop!

Making progress, albeit slowly

PS: have already this in the same file:

[ActionPlugins][0]
MidButton;NoModifier=org.kde.paste
RightButton;NoModifier=org.kde.contextmenu
wheel:Vertical;NoModifier=org.kde.switchdesktop