Weird keyboard locks in IntelliJ IDEA (delete & arrow keys, etc.)

Question

While working in IntelliJ IDEA, the keyboard occasionally locks in a way that delete or < > ^ keys don't work properly anymore, in a way that delete doesn't do anything anymore, and the arrow keys scroll the entire source code / editor section.

I don't know if I am accidentially some kind of shortcut, but the only way I can get it back to normal again is closing and re-opening the IDE, which is annoying of course.

I'm on Mac OS X Lion, latest IntelliJ IDEA CE (11.1.1), but also had it before with the previous versions.

On Montain Lion, and with latest IDEA (12.1.2) and still happens to me 2-3 times per week... — Adagios, May 02 '13 at 10:56
There seems to be [a new bug open](http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-91162) at JetBrains that's relevant to this. — Adagios, May 02 '13 at 11:09
[Here](http://stackoverflow.com/a/27344595/766855) is a workaround to this issue — Camilo Silva, Dec 07 '14 at 16:20
https://stackoverflow.com/a/60457695/1058292 solved it for me - none of the others here — atreeon, Feb 28 '20 at 18:56

score 70 · Answer 1 · edited Sep 13 '17 at 11:01

70

This answer on superuser.com worked for me:

ibus-daemon -rd

edited Sep 13 '17 at 11:01

Vadim Kotov

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answered Sep 03 '14 at 14:38

alwe

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This worked for me. However it set the keyboard layout to US. I used the following to set the keyboard to UK (you will need to change this to whatever your keyboard is): ibus-daemon -rd sleep 0.25 setxkbmap gb Not sure why a delay is required, but without it the keyboard remains mapped to US – Matt Innes Nov 07 '14 at 10:04
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Using fish-shell `ibus-daemon -rd; and sleep 0.25; and setxkbmap gb` did the trick for me on Ubuntu 14.04 – Markus Jun 24 '15 at 14:26
This break my ISO international layout keyboard as well, after doing this I cant make any accent. Were in 2020 , is there a way to fix this efficently? – Dimitri Kopriwa Apr 02 '20 at 07:58
@DimitriKopriwa Honestly, I dont have this problem anymore since years and I wonder everytime when this gets upvoted that this problem still exists for some people. I guess this only happens on some old versions of system/intellij/libs/kernel/...? – alwe Apr 05 '20 at 13:42
I still have the issue and I have a opensource project official license and the latest version of intellij, this is not fixed. – Dimitri Kopriwa Apr 06 '20 at 12:27

Ali.Ghodrat · Answer 2 · 2017-06-04T12:40:10.910

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Just turn off Vim Emulator from Tools like this picture:

edited Jun 04 '17 at 12:40

answered Apr 06 '17 at 01:08

Ali.Ghodrat

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The weird situation I was in, in case it helps someone: I didn't even have the Ideavim plugin installed (so couldn't see this option under Tools). I had to install the Ideavim plugin in order to disable it... – Jdog Jun 12 '19 at 09:30
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Thanks saved a lot of rework! – Abhishek Deshmukh Apr 06 '23 at 05:59

Sophia Feng · Answer 3 · 2015-04-07T06:04:25.293

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I am new to IntelliJ, and had the same problem of deleting by delete. But I just realised that IntelliJ is actually mimicing the keys in Vim.

For example, when some text is highlighted, pressing d deletes the text, pressing y copies (yanks) it, pressing p pastes (puts) it, and pressing i enters the editting (insert) mode.

For navigation, Ctrl+f navigates to the next screen, Ctrl+b navigates to the previous screen, and Shift+g navigates to the end of the file.

All are same as in Vim.

edited Apr 07 '15 at 06:04

answered Apr 06 '15 at 20:30

Sophia Feng

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No worries, I've just figured it out. There's an option under Tools call Vim Emulator, uncheck this and it will fix the issue. – alsobubbly Apr 22 '15 at 10:03

score 9 · Accepted Answer · answered May 03 '12 at 12:12

9

Check idea.log (Help | Reveal Log in ...) for exceptions. If you see PSI/document inconsistency before reparse there, then you are probably affected by this bug.

If there are other exceptions not related to this bug, please send the log to JetBrains technical support.

answered May 03 '12 at 12:12

CrazyCoder

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Yes, I see this in the log, and it's also still in v11.1.2. I haven't tried the latest EAP though yet. – Mathias Conradt Jul 03 '12 at 03:20
This is a recurring annoying thing which resists for years. The solution is presented in another answer. Simply type on the shell: ibus-daemon -rd – Richard Gomes Dec 13 '19 at 18:00
@RichardGomes this ibus bug was fixed years ago, make sure you have the version with the fix: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-78860#focus=streamItem-27-1602785.0-0 – CrazyCoder Dec 13 '19 at 18:02
@CrazyCoder : I'm running the latest and greatest IntelliJ at this point in time: 2019.3. The issue persists. – Richard Gomes Dec 13 '19 at 18:19
@RichardGomes the issue is not in IntelliJ IDEA, but in ibus, please read the linked comment. – CrazyCoder Dec 13 '19 at 18:20
@CrazyCoder: I use Linux 100% of time since 2004, various distributions. I've never observed such behavior using any other application. It only happens with IntelliJ. Whatever your opinion is or my opinion is, the solution is simple (after you know it!): ibus-daemon -rd . The correct solution is not looking at an issue management system which is not going to help you. The correct solution for this questions is typing ibus-daemon -rd – Richard Gomes Dec 13 '19 at 18:23
@RichardGomes What ibus version do you have? It's probably still not updated and doesn't have the fix for the issue. It's not IntelliJ IDEA specific, will affect all Java Swing apps. It's not the solution, it's a hack/workaround. The solution is to either uninstall ibus or use ibus version which has the fix. – CrazyCoder Dec 13 '19 at 18:25
I'm running the latest, greatest, rock solid Debian Buster 10.2 which works just fine with all other applications. – Richard Gomes Dec 13 '19 at 18:26
@RichardGomes many distributions still didn't include the ibus fix for this issue. You may want to contact your distro package managers for help. – CrazyCoder Dec 13 '19 at 18:27
@CrazyCoder : The issue management system asks for ibus 1.5.11. All \*ibus\* packages I have report version 1.5.19. To be fair, it's a long time I do not observe this issue once again. However, it happened to me once again just minutes ago after I pasted some code into a Scala worksheet. – Richard Gomes Dec 13 '19 at 18:36

score 6 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 21 '15 at 23:30

I faced same issue,

Environment:

IDEA 14.1.4 on Ubuntu Gnome 15.04

Solution :

I work with default keymaps, but some reason default keymap was not working. Hence I removed 'IdeaVim' plugin and restarted the IDE, everything works fine now. File > Settings > Plugins and look for the plugins.

score 5 · Answer 6 · answered Oct 18 '14 at 16:49

There is a an open issue in jetbrains youtrack for intellij idea that recommend two solutions:

Keyboard input may be unlocked by restarting IBus daemon ("ibus-daemon -rd" from a console).
IBus can be disabled for IDEA by unsetting env. variable XMODIFIERS (e.g. "XMODIFIERS= idea.sh"), but ability to input national characters in IDEA will be lost.

I have used the second one and fixed my problem.

score 4 · Answer 7 · answered Jul 02 '12 at 22:57

4

I have the same issue periodically, which is a pain because IntelliJ takes so long to load in the first place, then I need to close it and start all over again!

I don't have "PSI" anywhere in my IntelliJ logs. I'll be sending my logs off to IntelliJ; hopefully they can fix this ASAP as it is a major time waster!

Other things I've tried:

Changing the current keymap - arrow keys don't work in any keymaps
Closing and reopening just the project - issue persists until IntelliJ itself is closed and reopened.
Trying other keys - It seems like Ctrl and Command are completely ignored by the IDE once it gets in this state. Of course, all the text entry keys still work, so you can type, just can't change cursor position using anything but the mouse and menu bar. In a pinch, one could work like this for a short period of time, but that would entail a significant masochist streak!

answered Jul 02 '12 at 22:57

Tom Dibble

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I'm on 11.1.2 meanwhile and as far as I remember, it seems to have gotten better, can't really recall whether I had this issue since the update, but might be worth to update if you haven't. Which IDEA version are you using? – Mathias Conradt Jul 03 '12 at 03:12
(However, the mentioned bug http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-80181 below doesn't seem to be fixed with 11.1.2 either, still some problems, but I haven't checked the EAP as of Jun 22 yet). – Mathias Conradt Jul 03 '12 at 03:19
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I had the same issue in 12.0.2 on Windows 7, also no "inconsistency" in the log file. I tried changing my Keymap settings, and once I set them back to "Default" everything worked again. – findango Jan 31 '13 at 22:02

score 3 · Answer 8 · answered Jan 19 '14 at 17:27

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You may need to update your plugins. They can cause strange behavior if they are out of date.

http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/webhelp/installing-updating-and-uninstalling-repository-plugins.html

answered Jan 19 '14 at 17:27

jsears

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score 2 · Answer 9 · answered Feb 18 '16 at 21:07

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If you do ibus restart, you'll get a qwerty keyboard. For french users, you can do :

ibus restart; sleep 1; ibus engine xkb:fr::fra

I suppose you can change fr::fra by ru or us:dvorak:eng

answered Feb 18 '16 at 21:07

Nicolas Zozol

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score 2 · Answer 10 · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:04

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I had the same issue when upgrading to IntelliJ 14.1.4. If you have the IdeaVim plug-in installed, try disabling it. That worked for me. Reference

edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:04

Community

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answered Oct 18 '16 at 03:34

Aliti

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score 1 · Answer 11 · answered Oct 28 '17 at 20:54

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In my case backspace didn't work but only in terminal. I fixed it by going

Preferences -> Terminal -> Check "Override IDE shortcuts"

answered Oct 28 '17 at 20:54

Piotr Korlaga

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score 1 · Answer 12 · answered Oct 10 '19 at 15:27

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Ran into this same issue on Windows 10. You can try closing the IDE from the Task Manager manually. Do this when the IntelliJ is not operational i.e. when IntelliJ Idea is starting, but the screen is not open yet.

answered Oct 10 '19 at 15:27

Syed Muhammad Sajjad

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score 1 · Answer 13 · edited Feb 25 '20 at 05:30

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I had the same problem before. First, you need to check if there is a 'VIM emulator'. If so, try disabling it, that should suffice. If the problem persists, try contacting the support in the help section on the menu bar.

edited Feb 25 '20 at 05:30

ilke444

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answered Feb 24 '20 at 20:16

score 1 · Answer 14 · edited Jun 16 '20 at 15:11

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Workaround for unresponsive keyboard on Ubuntu 20.04

From : https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-23472

Go to IDE "Help | Edit Custom VM options..."

Add -Drecreate.x11.input.method=true to a new line

Restart IDE

edited Jun 16 '20 at 15:11

desertnaut

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answered Jun 16 '20 at 14:48

freak0

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score 0 · Answer 15 · answered Sep 01 '16 at 09:31

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Same problem for me today. My solution was to unplug and plugin the usb keyboard on my MacBook. Hope it helps.

answered Sep 01 '16 at 09:31

albanx

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score 0 · Answer 16 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Ubuntu 18.04.02
Idea (Ultimate) 2019.2

Had the same problem. Keyboard all of a sudden stopped recognizing arrow keys and backspace. Non of the solutions above would work.
What did work -- was switching the Boot SDK back to the old trusty Oracle 1.8 (I was running on JB 9).

How-To:

Help->Find Action
search for JDK. select Switch Boot JDK and pick an 8 or an 11 version of java. restart
If you do not have a local 8 or 11 java JDK installed. I only had the issue with 9, both 8 and 11 work fine.
search for action SDK, select "Get JB SDK from Bintray" and pick the latest available 11 or 8 as you prefer ...

Good Luck,
Nick

score 0 · Answer 17 · answered Sep 15 '19 at 17:41

In my case, it was something different. I got this weird behaviour after I entered my licence credentials to Idea. I suppose it created a new Jet Brains user's account for me with an ability to sync IDE settings enabled by default. My suggestion that it has overridden my setting (including keyboard bindings) with some default ones created by Jet Brains.

Fortunately, I had previously set up my Settings Repository on Github. I rolled back to my old settings pressing File -> Settings Repository -> Override Local.

The issue was on macOS in Database editor.

atreeon · Answer 18 · 2020-02-28T19:05:05.170

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Go to the most recently opened IntelliJ instance
Check if the cursor has become stuck in that project's terminal window
no? check all other open IntelliJ instances

edited Feb 28 '20 at 19:05

answered Feb 28 '20 at 18:55

atreeon

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score 0 · Answer 19 · answered Jan 09 '22 at 12:32

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You can simply: Reset all keymaps to default or windows:

File > Settings > Keymap > "Change first input to preferred keymap default"

answered Jan 09 '22 at 12:32

Victor Majri

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score 0 · Answer 20 · answered May 12 '22 at 08:53

In my case, switching to a different file causes the problem. I found that right clicking on the editor resolves the problem temporally. Clicking on a different window(inside IDEA) then clicking back to the editor solves the problem too.

I am using 2021.1.3 UE on Windows 10

Shivanshu Nanda · Answer 21 · 2023-03-10T10:12:43.687

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For me using Mac M1 it worked by adding VM option

-Dcom.jetbrains.use.old.keyevent.processing=true in the idea.vmoptions file.

Go to Help -> Click on "Edit Custom VM Options" It will ask permission to create idea.vmoptions if not created before.

Add the -Dcom.jetbrains.use.old.keyevent.processing=true . Save and restart! Voila! Back to coding!

edited Mar 10 '23 at 10:12

answered Mar 10 '23 at 10:12

Shivanshu Nanda

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score -1 · Answer 22 · answered Jun 25 '20 at 18:59

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The easiest way to fix this is to disable your VIM Emulator which you will find in the bottom right corner in your in.IDEA. That should do it

answered Jun 25 '20 at 18:59

Weird keyboard locks in IntelliJ IDEA (delete & arrow keys, etc.)

22 Answers22

Environment:

Solution :

How-To:

Linked