The VideoLAN Forums

Hi all,

I recently upgraded from years of using Ubuntu variants to Debian 9 (stable) and am having some trouble retaining reliable keyboard control with full-screen enabled... I haven't been able to find any results for similar problems elsewhere but I also really don't know exactly what issue to search for... videos play normally but the window seems to lose focus after a few seconds, after which VLC hotkeys stop working until I click somewhere on the screen.

Was most previously using Ubuntu Mate 16.04 w/ VLC 2.2.2 and definitely never ran into this annoying behavior before.. I'm now using the Mate desktop environment with the Marco window manager (no compositor).

As a small side-note, I've noticed VLC and VirtualBox are the only two programs that don't seem to follow my BlackMATE system theme, would love to figure out why that is and try to correct it (probably a good subject for another thread..)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Nvm, unchecking "Resize interface to video size" fixed my full screen issue right up.. still curious about my system theme not taking effect but I'll start another thread for that specifically.

Even if unchecking that option helps with the focus/control bug this is still a (major) regression that should be dealt with. I am also using Mate/Marco and wonder if that's related. If it would be more common there would probably more reports on it but I could not find any.

I'm seeing this just lately on VLC 3.0.4 on Linux Mint 19 (64-bit).

Unchecking "Resize interface to video size" did not help.

In fact, I can press "F" to go full screen, then immediately after that, press spacebar, and the video will not unpause. I have to click in the video somewhere, then press spacebar. Or, interestingly, if I click first in the video, then F, then spacebar, it works. However, as soon as the interface goes away, I can merely move the mouse (not trackpad, so no accidental click event!) to have spacebar no longer work again.

Definitely worth fixing in my opinion.... Not sure about everyone else but spacebar and F are pretty much all the shortcuts I use 95% of the time.

Sorry, MATE here too BTW.

OP here, not sure why I initially thought the "Resize interface to video size" option fixed my issue, soon thereafter found that not to be the case..

For the record, I later opened an issue over in the marco repository: https://github.com/mate-desktop/marco/issues/514

But, the Ubuntu Mate project has dropped VLC for MPV as the default player in 19.10 so I doubt they'll be putting much more effort into fixing this bug... I personally already switched to MPV awhile ago (much better x265 support) and haven't looked back but just wanted to provide a little update here..

I came across the same issue, resolved for me by disabling the VLC skin
I was using and instead resorting back to the standard VLC interface.

Same problem here, neither skinned / native interface nor the resize interface setting did help for me.

My VLC 3.0.8 "Vetinari" on Linux Mint 19.2 Mate reacts to hotkeys again after I disabled "Show controls in full screen mode".