Searched for a few weeks and could not find any solid solution. Found a KDE thread that said it was a issue with flatpak but I don’t even have flatpak installed. Others say it’s Wayland, Do non KDE users on wayland get this too?
I know it’s for security but it’s too damned annoying to be worth it! Should I setup a tiling WM and be done with it? It really is that bad.
All I want to do is play Skyrim without seeing this every 15 minutes!
Ok so I’ve run into this bug frequently with my Steam Deck for the past 2 years.
The following is my possibly innacurate, but genuine attempt to best describe whats going:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=490666
Its a KDE bug that is specific to how KDE handles GTK (2 and 3?) in Wayland.
It is not a bug with Wayland. It is not a bug with GTK.
GNOME doesn’t seem to have this problem.
Its existed for about 3 years, the thread I linked above shows some of the explanation of how/why its occuring… even though this particular bug report is only a few months old, you can find it recurring further back in the past.
Here’s some more bug threads:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=480412
https://invent.kde.org/plasma/xdg-desktop-portal-kde/-/issues/6
Basically, in an attempt to make remote access/control permissions for GTK to work properly in KDE Wayland, KDE implemented what multiple KDE developers have themselves described as a ‘hack’, a temporary, quick fix solution, in various comments on forums.
EDIT// Here’s an example of a KDE dev outright stating this, from the first thread:
Just to clarify that, we have two paths. One uses xtest one does not.
The xtest path is more of a hack, at the time for just GTK3. If anyone can test commenting out:
plasma-workspace/xembedsniproxy/sniproxy.cpp
if (windowAttributes && !(windowAttributes->all_event_masks & XCB_EVENT_MASK_BUTTON_PRESS)) { m_injectMode = XTest; }and see if clicking their app still works that would be useful. We can try and make the xtest path less used.
The rest of that thread is another KDE dev pushing hotfixes, interspersed with others saying that the problem persists.
//
Unsuprisingly, having a quick fix hack as an underlying, integral part of an entire DE, is not a good idea, as it doesn’t actually solve the problem except in very specific situations, and causes mass confusion downstream.
The problem has persisted for years because… as far as I can tell, to fix it properly would require a significant rewrite of KDE’s entire permission model, and also as far as i can tell, this has yet to be done.
The problem originally was pretty rare and thus I guess low priority, but as more and more people are trying to use KDE Wayland and a console controller or Steam Deck or gamescope or something like that, you can find more and more people complaining about it.
The devs seem to keep thinking they’ve fixed it, over 2024, only to find… no, they have not.
There is no functional ‘fix’, outside of switching back to X11, not until KDE gets its shit together.
For me on a Steam Deck, wanting to be able to use it as a gaming device and a PC, I switched over to the GNOME flavor of Bazzite, all problems solved.
The problem has persisted for years
This feature hasn’t existed for years, it’s quite new.
This has absolutely nothing to do with GTK or system trays, and it is in no way or form specific to KDE Plasma or a bug in it. It’s an Xwayland feature that was poorly thought out and that’s challenging to work around.
… Ok.
So, Wayland cannot actually directly allow input events to access the system directly.
It instead passes them off, as a request for access, to xdg-desktop-portal, which prompts the user with an access request.
This should only occur once, user hits ‘grant access’ and then the system remembers this.
(Note that this is a fairly significant problem on its own if the user does not have a mouse and keyboard, such as on a game deck, in situations where the user has no actual way to give inputs that are not moderated by an app)
But instead, it keeps recurring, the system doesn’t remember properly, it’ll work for a bit, and then ask again.
The reporting of bugs I’ve seen like this goes back to around 3 years ago, when people/distros/DEs started to switch and then default to wayland.
What I’ve also seen is far less bug reports from gnome users than kde users, and in at least my own experience, switching to gnome completely solved the ‘constantly re-requesting access’ problem.
It doesn’t fix the problem of ‘how do you grant access the first time if you don’t have a mouse and keyboard’.
So… it seems to me that the more technically accurate thing to say would be:
xdg-desktop-portal-gnome has actually properly been updated to handle this, whereas xdg-desktop-portal-kde has not.
Because gnome wayland seems to at least remember the granted access once you figure out how to give it once, kde wayland does not.
xdg-desktop-portal-gnome has actually properly been updated to handle this, whereas xdg-desktop-portal-kde has not.
No, that’s completely wrong. Like I said, Xwayland doesn’t remember the permission, which xdg-desktop-portal-kde would very much support.
You get the exact same prompts every single time on Gnome too.
I am quite confused now.
You seem to be either quite confident or quite knowledgable about this, or both.
If the issue is Xwayland doesn’t remember the permission… why does clicking to grant access work at all, even temporarily?
If the issue is Xwayland doesn’t have the ability to set the permission at all, even temporarily, which it seems to, why is Xwayland not just automatically shunting the actual directive to set the permission over to xdg-desktop-portal, which you say can correctly handle this, on kde.
As I understand it, thats what is supposed to be happening.
The problem is not just that the prompt happens once, the first time you use a new input. There doesn’t seem to be any way to avoid that with Wayland.
The problem is that this prompt keeps happening and is not remembered.
How can it be the case that XWayland can grant you an app temporary permission, but not permanent?
And again… I solved the ‘permission not getting remembered’ problem by switching to Bazzite GNOME.
To me, this strongly implies a disparity in handling this issue between KDE and GNOME… that or Bazzite is doing some kind of special something that others are not.
why is Xwayland not just automatically shunting the actual directive to set the permission over to xdg-desktop-portal, which you say can correctly handle this, on kde.
It is doing that. It just doesn’t give the portal any information at all - neither that the request is coming from Xwayland, nor what X11 app is trying to emulate input.
Like I said, the feature has been really poorly thought out.
How can it be the case that XWayland can grant you an app temporary permission, but not permanent?
It keeps the handle around until the X11 app’s process exits, then it’s gone. It’s how all on-demand permissions work, unless you do special stuff to restore it later without user interaction.
that or Bazzite is doing some kind of special something that others are not.
Yes, they patch permission prompts out entirely. They do that on their KDE edition too.
This seems like the most complete reasoning for what is going on. Since waiting for kde to fix things takes years while the concentrate on pushing new features maybe it would be best to test Hyperland to see if it suffers from this issue. Since it is a security protocol in wayland and I saw a gnome user in this thread is also suffering from this issue it may be present in Hyperland as well.
Honestly I hope this doesn’t happen in Hyperland too as I’m really looking forward to trying it out, been missing i3 allot lately, and it might inspire me to get back to my coding projects I’ve been putting off for no good reason.
There seems to be allot of workarounds in this thread for me to go through and test.
Thanks for the info. I appreciate it!
Please actually do test hyprland and post it, if you can.
I am frankly baffled that such a common issue has been going on for years now and no one has seemingly 100% fixed it… yet every distro targeted at a steam deck or other handheld, which doesn’t have a kb+m unless you also have a dock and a kb+m, seems to have gone with wayland, and are just pretending this doesn’t functionally cripple your handheld in desktop mode.
Its somehow worse than stickykeys prompt in windows alt tabbing your game: this will lock up your entire control scheme, and seemingly can’t actually be permanently fixed or turned off.
My suspicion is that the initial pop up still happens in gnome, but in kde, when you click the grant access prompt… it doesn’t actually permanently give the permission; some amount of time or sets of sequences of events will reset the granted access and then lock you out and re-prompt you.
It about time to switch things up. I dont know when I’ll get around to it. First I have to do some research to see if it is compatible to install alongside my current setup. I will defiantly let you know when I do though.
Linux is held together with duck tape and 20 year old code
I get that when I try to open the torrent client BiglyBT by clicking the tray icon 😄
This has started happening often while playing games remotely for me, which in some cases fad made it impossible.
It is a wayland feature to request access to allow for remote control of the device. In this case specifically for input. It shouldn’t be happening every 15 minutes. That is a problem with whatever app you are using that keeps requesting this permission?
Steam and ps5 controller.
i had the same issue. just disable the touchpad in plasma settings.
Are you talking about disabling PS5 controller touchpad in KDE settings or my computers touchpad? I dont see an option to disable PS5 touchpad in system settings.
system settings -> mouse & touchpad -> touchpad -> device enabled
I’m on PC so the dualsense is the only touchpad. can’t say how the settings are laid out on a laptop with built-in touchpad.
In your Steam input settings, are you able to remove the desktop control mapping (or whatever it’s called)? At least that’s the tip I found one day when I went searching for a solution; however, on my Steam Deck, I couldn’t find a way to disable desktop control. I just ended up assuming it was a result of playing on a steam deck (probably so my system wouldn’t become unusable in desktop mode while on the go).
I do see that option to disable
Desktop LayoutunderEdit, its the top most option. You don’t have that on the Deck? Maybe steam is set to always be in big picture mode on the Deck. I want one pretty bad.Thanks for the tip, too late for a gaming session tonight. If I start now I’ll be up till 2. I’ll try it out tomorrow!
So, when I was originally looking into this, I was playing something in desktop mode with my system docked and a keyboard and mouse attached I think.
Anyway, that option does not exist for the built in controller, no. Right now I’m using an external controller, got frustrated because the desktop mapping randomly minimized the emulator window. So I went looking, and yup - “official layout for - disabled” shows up.
So thank you for the reply! Just solved a headache for me!
This happens on gnome, too. I have chimera OS installed on a handheld I have, and every time I touched the screen, a remote bullshit something something pops up. It only goes away when I quit steam completely
It re pops up for you, on a handheld, with chimeraOS.
Fuck.
I’m running Bazzite/Gnome on a SteamDeck, and I only ever get pop ups like this a single time, when buried deep in trying to get gamescope to pass a steam deck input into a newly set up emulator program…
… what the heck is bazzite doing differenty than chimeraOS?
I have no idea. It’s annoying as hell. But thankfully it goes away when I quit steam. Maybe try uninstalling whatever remote app that is?
The problem is not the remote app in and of itself.
The problem is common to using the remote app, because both remote screen share and remote input recognition through gamescope (the actual process that translates steam deck or controller inputs into direct system inputs) are not allowed by wayland, for security reasons.
So, when you try to allow someone else to view your screen, or allow an app to be recognized as an inpuy sourcr, wayland explicitly asks you if this is ok.
… The way Wayland works, theres no way to avoid that initial prompt.
But the baffling part is that when you do grant permission… the system doesn’t remember you did so, so this keeps happening, it keeps asking over and over.
the xdg-desktop-portal-kde/gnome/whatever package should, as I understand it, be able to permenantly grant this permission.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Desktop_Portal
In the ‘input capture portal’ column…
We’ve got yes for GNOME/GTK4 Yes for hyprland, yes for kde, which both use QT6…
But No for the generic GTK3.
Fuck, maybe thats this whole thing?
That any GTK3 app just cannot actually permanently grant the permission, because they have no pathway to send a permament permission through wayland to xdg desktop portal?
So … basically, if any link of the chains between your input and anything you are rendering involves a GTK3 dependent app, it’ll just keep asking forever?
That would explain why this issue seems to start popping up alongside both Wayland and GTK4.
Fuck.
Ok, so that would mean that to solve this issue, either xdg-desktop-portal-gtk needs to be updated to allow an input portal request confirmation to actually go through…
Or you have to purge every app that hasn’t fully transitioned to GTK4 or QT6.
This sounds so annoying. Sometimes I feel like Wayland is like locking your car and throwing the key away then hoping you’d somehow be able to get in. It implements so many “security” features that just locks you from doing essential things on your system. I’m not an expert, but I think some work should be done for things like that to have a pipe? A tunnel? To go through Wayland’s security walls? It just doesn’t make sense sometimes
So there is a common link, steam. If its not just happening on KDE and on other DE’s. Just looked at linux-steams github to see if this bug has been reported to steam, is this what you are seeing?
It’s essentially the same, but it looks different since it’s gnome. It’s a window about a remote desktop thing that I have to cancel every time. It doesn’t show up anymore after I quit steam
I use an Xbox controller instead, works perfectly.
I’m glad I works for you, personally I hate the cockeyed non symmetrical joystick button layout. Ergonomically uncomfortable. Also one it the reasons I never really play my switch any longer.
I saw someone else in the comments recommend disabling the trackpad on the PS5 controller, maybe that’s the big difference as to why Xbox controllers don’t have this problem?
Haven’t gotten around to replying to everyone yet, still drinking coffee, thinking about posting to the dullmensclub about saying fukit, I’m going back to bed.
I’ll have to give that a go. There have been lots of good suggestions and a wealth of information for me to sort and try.
So in the great albeit butchered words of GLaDOS, Since I’m going through all the trouble of waking up, I must really love to test… And to be honest I do!
8bitdo pro controller? Works great for me. My favorite controller ever.
There is no way the PS layout is more comfortable. The left joystick is where it is on every other controller because that is where your thumb goes naturally.
Even on the other side, the face buttons are used much more commonly than the right stick in most cases. So they put the face buttons there because it’s where your thumb naturally goes.
Typically it’s not enough more uncomfortable to complain about it if I was like playing at a friend’s place (not that that happens anymore in these last generations, but it was huuuuuuuge in the early 90s), but still more than enough of a difference to never buy one.
What is the argument that the asymmetrical comfort zones you seem to have for each hand make any sense? The joystick placement may be cockeyed, but where your thumbs are comfortable should not be. I just can’t understand the argument by PS layout fanboys. Hence the question.
It is objectively not as comfortable to hold your thumb out of position.
At least assuming your hands are symmetrical. Maybe for you it is more accurate to do that, but it is not more comfortable.
This thing pops up over and over and over no matter how many times you give the okay.
Trying to play Minecraft Java with a controller mode and it interrupts nonstop. I too did not find a solution. I tried. It won.
What else do you have installed? KDE Connect?
KDE Connect doesn’t do this that I’ve ever seen, and I"ve used it in Wayland for years.
I don’t know if you’ve just never used this feature, but KDE Connect absolutely has a Remote Input option that pings this prompt. Unlike the prompt in the OP though, it has a “Restore on future sessions” checkbox.
When I first started getting this popup I did have that checkbox. I did check it. Didn’t really pay attention as it stopped happening for a while. It was just after Plasma 6 was released. My entire arch system was buggy for a couple months till they worked everything out. Maybe there is a setting in some config somewhere causing this lingering issue?
Yes but its not running.
you’ve got something connected that’s triggering the prompt, and kde on wayland issue is making it pop up over and over again. i think this one is as old as plasma 6 itself is.
try disconnecting all unnecessary input devices when playing. just usb mouse and keyboard. wireless is fine if it uses its own non-bt dongle.
or if it won’t open up a different can o’worms, switch to x11 for gaming sessions.
kde on wayland issue is making it pop up over and over again
Unfortunately it’s an Xwayland issue. It doesn’t remember the permission, and it also doesn’t give the desktop any information to work around it. Because of how portals work, the desktop doesn’t even know the request is coming from Xwayland :/
I’m actually using a ps5 controller and have mapped the dpad left and right to use keyboard input for a mod. If I don’t use those buttons for 15 minutes or so I get kicked out of game with this garbage popup, every time! At his point I’m fed up and ready to leave KDE. Been using KDE for 6 years and have seen so many poor design decisions but you could always go into the settings and fix it. This I guess has no fix.
Before Wayland was a thing, Steam used a X11 extension to send Mouse and Keyboard presses, which means that for a while, if you used Wayland you couldn’t emulate KB+M with your controller at all.
A while so long, that someone created a work around. Extest is a “adapter” that simulates the old X11 extension Steam was using and sends the keypresses using its own virtual input device, therefore completely bypassing the pop-ups.
While that wasn’t its intended function, and it is technically unnecessary now that Steam has added support for the proper ‘Wayland way of doing things’, I can confirm it still works just fine. I use Steam input all the time with no annoying pop-ups.It can be a bit annoying to install however. If you’re using Arch, grab it from the AUR. Bazzite ships with it OOTB, I believe.
Interesting Extest sound promising. I’ll have to give it a shot, could be a temporary workaround for the next few years till kde fixes this lol.
Are you using Steam Input Settings to map those dpad buttons? If so, try setting that back to default, then use AntiMicroX to map keyboard input to your dpad instead.
The problem with that is steam lets you configure per game. I have different keybindings depending on what game I’m playing. Not a bad suggestion to try though, would really help nail down whats partially causing the issue, steam input or the PS5 controller. Although as sp3tr4l pointed out there is probably an issue with how windowManagers are handling wayland security protocol’s, penquin said he is getting this on gnome too.
I also get this when playing games. I think it might be a steam thing.
Specifically it seems to be steam input. Likely a side effect of intercepting devices to remap them.
