Daniel Lemire's blog

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Strange KDE bug: can’t resize or move windows

31 thoughts on “Strange KDE bug: can’t resize or move windows”

  1. Anonymous says:

    i get the same problem from time to time and its very annoying

    killall kwin returned no processes killed

    kwrapper kwin -replace worked!!!

    thanks

  2. Anonymous says:

    Here we are in 2012 and your fix still works, thanks !

    I guess no one has debugged the issue for many years

  3. Anonymous says:

    2016, still works (kwrapper5).

  4. Tom Laermans says:

    Yep, 2016, still needed and works:

    kwrapper5 kwin_x11 –replace

  5. I ran into the same problem today. killall kwin reported no processes running. I tried just running kwin, and voila!… my windows now have handles and headers, and are mobile once again. kwin running in a terminal though is not useful.

    Once I rebooted, things began to work again, so I believe that my issue was transient.

  6. Matt says:

    January 2017 – still broken, fix above still works.

  7. Jon says:

    Same. I could move tabs around within Chrome, but all the windows were locked down and immobile. I wish I knew what triggered this condition.

  8. mo says:

    May 2017, the fix
    killall kwin_x11
    kwrapper5 kwin_x11 –replace
    still works here …

    1. Philipe Mota says:

      I just confirmed that the problem is still present and the above fix (updated from the previous msg) still works! Actually I’m very glad to find this fix, I’ve been dealing with this problem for a while now.

  9. Jason says:

    man i am so tired of this sh*T..

    i’ve noticed this twice now!!!
    >after updates
    >after enable/disable kwallet…

    can someone please tell me what is the use of kwallet?
    surely if someone wanted that kind of security they can take 5min to download it…

    please, for the LOVE OF GOD… please stop trying to go the windows10 way… at the moment i am bouncing between kde and xfce, my right click does not even work… sigh,

    kde went down the sh*th0le

  10. Michael says:

    The above solution only worked for me until changed desktops.

    I ran ‘kwrapper5 kwin –replace &’ and could move windows again. Then switched to desktop 2 and I coulldn’t move windows. Switched back to desktop 1 and still couldn’t move windows.

    Repeating the process repeated these symptoms. 🙁

  11. sep says:

    2018… same problem the fix still works kwrapper5 kwin_x11 –replace &

  12. av500 says:

    also works in April 2018

  13. Aruna says:

    My problem is that I cannot move the whole window. Last part of a window remains in right monitor.

  14. Ľudovít says:

    Hi, I am using KDE in debian stretch and encoutered this issue after waking up my laptop from sleep this morning.

    After curing it with kwin restart, I managed to reproduce the behaviour after either switching workspace or moving a window to another workspace using keyboard shortcuts. The same happens if I move a window between monitors using keyboard shortcut. If I switch workspaces with mouse (using Workspace switcher panel widget) or move the window to other monitor or workspace using window bar context menu commands everything works as expected.

    I also encounter a strange issue with command run dialog not getting focus after being invoked with Alt+F2. Definitively something is not right with either keyboard or KWin that persists the KWin restarts…

    1. Ludovit says:

      During the course of time I have found out that the problem becomes incurable after around 49 days of uptime. After this amount of time every desktop switch causes the KWin to crash and it lasts only until the next desktop switch to crash after KWin restart.

      Maybe it helps someone to identify the root cause of this bug, that is causing our workstations to be restarted every around 7 weeks 🙁

  15. J.S. says:

    For me, the solution was ‘kwrapper5 kwin_x11 –replace &’
    In case this ends up looking the same as several other posts, there are 2* hyphens in front of ‘replace’!

    1. Ryan Alizadeh says:

      When I run that it gives me an error “KInit could not launch kwin_xll”

      Do you know how to fix this?

      Thanks

  16. przemek says:

    Woop woop,

    2019 and it still works

  17. Benjamin Chausse says:

    The problem started occuring on my computer after messing up an installation of i3 and kde on arch. (I gave up to stay on plasma)
    Only thing is I have to repeat those commands everytime I boot. Does anyone know where the script that is causing this could be?

  18. Simon Mihevc says:

    I thank you for this fix. It’s been eating me alive. All windows would loose menubar and resize ability whenever I logged in for the 2nd time into same session.

    This in on KDE 5.8.6 Debian stretch 9.9 and I suspect it’s due to either dist-upgrade from older KDE/Debian or me messing up the themes somehow.

  19. Roger Lucas says:

    Still finding this in 2020! Thanks for the post!

  20. Noel says:

    March 2020, still works!
    Thank you!

  21. Madhuri Murthy says:

    Used to work okay, but now it complains that XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is not set and isn’t working anymore 🙁

  22. Matt D. says:

    Working for me in 2020, although closing a terminal window breaks kwin again. I also encountered the XDG_RUNTIME_DIR when I tried to re-run on a new terminal window.

  23. Ruthvin says:

    not sure what worked but one of the things worked. all the screens went crazy for a few mins before it started working

  24. Steve says:

    Oct 2020 and it works.

  25. Titi says:

    April 2021 and it still works!

  26. Luca says:

    September 2021 it doesn’t work for me 🙁

  27. Dan says:

    December 22, 2021 and I found a fix to a similar problem (My GTK apps refused to resize). Here’s how I fixed it

    – Go to a tty (ctrl+alt+f2), and login to the account you use with KDE
    – run “cd ~/.config”, without quotes
    – open “kwinrc” in a text editor (“nano kwinrc”)
    – Find the line that says “OpenGLIsUnsafe=true” under “[Compositing]”, and change it to “OpenGLIsUnsafe=false”
    – save the file and reboot.

    Hope this helps!

  28. jxtxzzw says:

    Thanks so much. It works for me in Dec 2022.

    killall kwin_x11
    kwrapper5 kwin_x11 –replace &