Albert hotkey (shortcut) didn't work in Gnome Terminal or Gnome Terminator

I'm on Ubuntu 20.10 with Gnome Wayland session.

I have installed Albert (version 0.17.2) and I have setup Ctrl+Alt+Space Albert hotkey.

In Gnome Tweaks, I have enabled « Ctrl position - Swap Left Win with Left Ctrl » option.

This hotkey works perfectly when I'm in Firefox, VSCode, Signal, Mattermost, xterm... windows.

Issue: I can't open Albert when I'm in Gnome Terminal or Gnome Terminator windows.

How can I fix that?

Best regards,
Stéphane

Same question on:

• albertlauncher/albert GitHub issue
• gnome-terminator/terminator GitHub issue
• GNOME/gnome-terminal Gnome GitLab issue

1 Answer

The problem is Wayland. Wayland does not support Xlib keygrabs. Without xlib installed Albert would even crash. However if it is installed it results in this weird behavior. If an X window is focused the hotkey works, if not it doesnt.

Wayland does not allow keygrabs by design.

Thus, set up your own custom shortcut key in your desktop environment (compositor in Wayland terms) instead. Specify albert toggle as the command to run. For example in Gnome Shell, head to "Settings" - "Keyboard" and define a custom shortcut there that triggers the command.