Global hotkeys (Exposé, Spaces, etc.) suddenly disabled
Several readers have reported an issue where global hotkeys for triggering specific functions in Mac OS X 10.5.x (Leopard) are suddenly disabled. In other words, for instance: F11 is set to reveal the Desktop via Exposé, or F11 is set to activate Spaces, but suddenly the triggers no longer work and only a system alert noise is played when these keys are pressed. Inspecting System Preferences will reveal that, indeed, the settings are no longer in place. The same problem can affect hot corners that are designated for Exposé, and Dashboard functionality.
In some cases, it appears that Blizzard's World of Warcraft may be to blame. The game appears to delete some of the aforementioned settings when quitting or crashing. A post from a Blizzard developer in the company's forum blames Mac OS X:
"Every time we have tried to fix it, we have come away with the assessment that it is an OS bug."
A user in the forums created an AppleScript that will resolve the issue when it occurs. The script should be run after quitting (or crashing) World of Warcraft. As with any unknown script, you should inspect this download carefully before running it.
Other potential cures for this issue:
- Launch Activity Monitor (located in /Applications/Utilities) and look for a process called "ScreenSaverEngine," which may be hung. Quit the process. Go to the Desktop & Screen Saver pane of System Preferences and turn off the Screen Saver.
- Unplug then reconnect your USB keyboard.
Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.
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I've had this happen to me quite a lot of times, and have never got to the bottom of it. It's pretty irritating because I have to redefine the Expose and Dashboard shortcuts in System Preferences, but it doesn't seem to have any other adverse effects.
Points of interest:
1. I've generally noticed the problem after waking from sleep rather than at any other time, though I can't say for certain when it actually happens.
2. I don't recall it ever happening under Leopard, but it happened lots of times under Tiger.
3. I don't possess World of Warcraft.
I don't know, but I have never played World of Warcraft, so that can't be it. Coincidentally, another problem came up with the OS (10.6) at the same time: I couldn't double click on an app/folder to open it. The rather backwards solution for that was to go into the keypad prefs, and change them from fast to slow, and then I could put them back to fast again after I confirmed that the I could double click normally.
- by getRfreakon1 October 24, 2009 5:39 PM PDT
- ....a little while later.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(5 Comments)Here is what finally resolved the issue for me, no Applescript required: I manually disabled spaces in the Preferences, and rebooted and voila! global hotkeys back to normal.
Note that before I did this, I had logged in a different user, with the same problems (including the one in my last post, wherein I couldn't open folders/apps by double-clicking).
I hope that this helps someone else, as it made for a very frustrating couple of hours trying to figure it out.