MacOS – Command+right/left stopped working

keyboardmacos

On a couple occasions since I installed Lion, the keyboard shortcuts ⌘+→ and ⌘+← have stopped working to navigate to the beginning/end of a line inside text fields and such. Any ideas what's going on?

Notes:

My computer doesn't beep when I hit these shortcuts.
Keyboard Viewer shows that when I hold down ⌘, pressing left/right doesn't do anything.
When I hold down both ⌘ and ⇧, the arrow keys work fine.
The left and right arrow keys still work by themselves.
⌘+↑ and ⌘+↓, and ⌥+arrows still work.
⌃+A and ⌃+E still work.
I don't have any particularly weird custom keyboard shortcuts set up.
If it matters, I use 4-finger swipes and ⌃+arrows for switching desktops, two- and three-finger swipes for navigation, and three-finger swipes for Mission Control & App Exposé.

Best Answer

I've noticed that certain applications seem to trap the gestures, even when they're no longer active.

The only time I've been able to 100% narrow down something trapping various shortcut keys was with either Apple Remote Desktop (the built in screen sharing functions), or Microsoft Remote Desktop.

Even though I clicked outside of the app and started using something else, something caused notably my ctrl+←/→ to stop working.

I unfortunately do not remember the specific steps I took to resolve the issue. Whether it was explicitly sending focus into the remote connection window, and then (with the mouse only) explicitly out of the window, and onto another app that is not just the Desktop, might have fixed the problem. Otherwise, I may have just closed the window in frustration.

Either way, this issue is one that you may have to do some personal diagnosing to figure out. Check for any running apps that are notably not native (Java, AIR-based, etc.), or have some other form of deep integration (trapping keyboard events and sending them to another computer is pretty deep), that may be causing this issue.

Related Solutions

Why isn’t KeyRemap4MacBook’s “PageUp/PageDown to Left/Right (only in iPhoto)” setting working

I posted my question on the KeyRemap4MacBook Google Group, and got a reply from Takayama Fumihiko, the creator of KeyRemap4MacBook. He had me send him the vendor ID and product ID for the device, and sent me back a private.xml file with a new setting that worked. (The pre-defined "PageUp/PageDown to Left/Right (only in iPhoto)" setting only works with the vendor ID and product ID for the Kensington K33374 USB remote.)

Here's the private.xml file contents:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>

  <devicevendordef>
    <vendorname>Tenx_Technology_Inc</vendorname>
    <vendorid>0x1130</vendorid>
  </devicevendordef>

  <deviceproductdef>
    <productname>Tenx_wireless_USB_gadget</productname>
    <productid>0x6604</productid>
  </deviceproductdef>

  <item>
    <name>PageUp/PageDown to Left/Right (only in iPhoto)</name>
    <appendix>(This is effective only with "Tenx_wireless_USB_gadget")</appendix>
    <identifier>private.pageupdown2leftright_iphoto</identifier>
    <only>IPHOTO</only>
    <device_only>DeviceVendor::Tenx_Technology_Inc,DeviceProduct::Tenx_wireless_USB_gadget</device_only>
    <autogen>--KeyToKey-- FROMKEYCODE_PAGEUP,   KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT</autogen>
    <autogen>--KeyToKey-- FROMKEYCODE_PAGEDOWN, KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT</autogen>
  </item>

</root>

See the "How to add new settings" section in the KeyRemap4MacBook documentation for instructions on what to do with the private.xml file (except replace the file instead of editing the original one with a text editor).

MacOS – Left Shift and Left Command combination yields only Left Command; other shift command combos work fine

I'm posting the non-answer of "I reinstalled OSX and upgraded to Maverick from Lion, and it now works" because, well, it now works. Unfortunately I don't know what were the actual reasons it broken and then un-broken. I am sorry to anyone whom this question didn't help at all.

If anyone else comes up with a reasonable explanation I'll mark them as the answer instead.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Why isn’t KeyRemap4MacBook’s “PageUp/PageDown to Left/Right (only in iPhoto)” setting working

MacOS – Left Shift and Left Command combination yields only Left Command; other shift command combos work fine

Related Question