Plasma not allowing change of applications

English Applications
1

This is weird, and only started happening in the last couple of days…
Using Plasma Latest on Tumbleweed latest, and last couple of days, works fine for several hours, but then, have several apps open, if I move to do anything in another open app, there is no reaction when trying to input/do anything. Have to go to the panel (yes, that’s working), and manually select the app I want to interact with, then it works fine! If I then want to go back to the previous app, have to go to the Panel, select the app, before I can do anything with it. etc, etc.
CPU/memory/disk still working like normal. Monitor app reacting the same as others - the graphs are updating normally, etc, but I have to select it if I want to change anything.

Have tried forcing a restart of plasma:

systemctl --user restart plasma-plasmashell
kquitapp6 plasmashell && kstart plasmashell
plasmashell --replace

(not all at once…), which doesn’t fix it - may kill a couple of apps, but still the same issue.
Thanks.
Have to log out/back in to fix for another few hours…

2

Please confirm that you are on TW20260817 (cat /etc/os-release).
That snapshot included a bunch of kf6-xxx packages and maybe a bug sneaked in.

3

Updated to this tonight, in the hope that it would fix it…

NAME="openSUSE Tumbleweed"
# VERSION="20260817"
ID="opensuse-tumbleweed"
ID_LIKE="opensuse suse"
VERSION_ID="20260817"
......

Have rebooted, (about half an hour ago) will see how it goes.
Previous update was about 2 days ago.

Thanks.

4

Just a note also…
Within the last couple of days, have also uninstalled the Thunderbird from Tumbleweed repo (~140.13.0), and downloaded/installed from Mozilla V153.0.3.
(Ah, whoops - has just updated to 154.0.)

Thanks.

5

Thought it was fixed, but back again, now…
System hasn’t been used for several hours.

6

When the problem occurs again, try Alt+Tab to switch to one of the affected applications. Does that restore input, or does it only work when you click its task-manager entry?

7

Yep, Alt+Tab, does work.

8

That suggests the problem is window activation/focus handling, rather than the applications themselves? Next time it happens, try clicking the affected window’s title bar. If that also activates it, that would give another useful clue that the problem is with window activation/focus.

9

No, that does not work… (ie still cannot do anything within the window.)

10

Are you using any kind of Virtualisation software (VirtualBox or VMware) at the same time?
I had a similar issues with VBox when it didn’t release my mouse from the virtual machine correctly.

11

No.
Installed, but not using.

12

Does the problem occur for a newly created user?

13

Is Xwayland Video Bridge running when this problem occurs? Your problem sounds exactly like one I had recently and the culprit ended up being a ghost Xwayland Video Bridge window (completely invisible, but covering the entire desktop) stealing focus clicks.

If I right-clicked at the top of the screen, I would manage to click on the invisible title bar, which allowed me to close it.

The solution was to uninstall Xwayland Video Bridge. So far I haven’t missed it, but I don’t do much screen sharing.

1 Like
14

I have the same problem but your solution of removing the xwaylandvideobridge package works for me. I also don’t use screen sharing often. That works for me.

1 Like
15

After today’s update, the problem persists. I had to remove the xwaylandvideobridge package again. So the only solution for me is to remove it.

Operating System: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20260825
KDE Plasma Version: 6.7.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.29.0
Qt Version: 6.11.2
Kernel Version: 7.2.0-1-default (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 12 × Intel® Core™ i5-10400F CPU @ 2.90GHz
Memory: 16 GiB of RAM (15.4 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
Manufacturer: ASUS
16

I’m glad that it helped you. Hopefully it helps OP as well.

Looking over at KDE’s website, it seems to be a legitimate bug which has been resolved within the past few days. The fix is implemented in 0.5.2, but TW is still on 0.5.0. I don’t know many people need xwaylandvideobridge, but hopefully it gets packaged in TW soon enough.

17

Hopefully will!
Have updated, then uninstalled, so will see how it goes, then after the reboot…
Mine DID seem to be just “each window”, rather than the whole screen.
Thanks.

18

Unfortunately today’s update 20260902 did not fix it.
There was an update xwaylandvideobridge to version 0.5.2.

I had to remove the xwaylandvideobridge package again. So the only solution for me is to remove it.