I’ve been using Shotcut for years. Sat down to edit my latest journey. Somehow I got the keyboard in a form for shortcut mode. Can’t write text in text boxes. For instance if I type r the letter doesn’t get put in the text box, but replaces the clip. Touch space makes the clip play.
Using Ubuntu 24.04 with the latest Flatpak-version. Have tried to reset Shotcut, uninstalled and installed again. Same thing, keyboard must be stuck in some kind of shortcut mode and I’ve never experienced it before. Having spent an hour trying to figure it out, I need help from the community here.
How do I get it out of this shortcut mode to be able to type text in text boxes that I overlay?
There is no way to exit a “shortcut mode.” That does not really exist in a typical Qt application. I tested what you describe in a Ubuntu 24.04 virtual machine running with Wayland and Ubuntu’s GNOME Shell. Yes, it was the version 25.08 Flatpak. Maybe you need to try to reboot. If that does not work, you can try to logout and switch to Xorg in the login screen to see if it makes a difference. If you are going to reply then please specify some example text boxes. I tried Text Simple and Rich filters, the Notes panel, Filters > search, and Properties > Comments.
Reinstalled image backup of my system from February 2025 to start with a known working setup. Updated all software and rebooted. Tried to edit in Shotcut and the same issue is there.
I beginning to suspect that Shotcut version 25.08.16 flatpak-version might have an issue. If I install Ubuntus snap-version all is OK, but I loose hardware acceleration of video.
After a day thinking what could be the cause I’ve written a summary of what I think could be the problem with the flatpak-version of Shotcut:
When writing input for text box overlays, timeline shortcuts is still active in flatpak version
My system uses Ubuntu 24.04 and I have used Shotcut for years, since 2019. I use the flatpak-version of Shotcut. Yesterday I begun to edit the raw video from my last journey. I do believe the previous version of Shotcut I used was the 25.05.11, which did not have this issue. My system has been updated to the 25.08.16-version.
I worked on the timeline and was adding a simple text box to a clip. I started to type in the text and only some letters registered in the input box. Things happened on the time line. If I typed the key r the clip on the timeline was replaced. If I pressed the space bar, the video started playing. Other letters gave different results, but those two got my attention.
I tried different things to fix this problem:
Reset Shotcut
Uninstalled and reinstalled Shotcut several times, including manually going through the file system to remove all traces of it.
Went back to a Clonezilla image backup of my system from February 2025 and updated it.
The problem persisted.
Since I use Ubuntu I tried the snap version of Shotcut. This works fine and hasn’t got this issue.
The problem only affects the flatpak-version of Shotcut. I’ve only tested on Ubuntu 24.04.
The next version of the snap is a major Qt upgrade to be 6.9 like the Flatpak. I wonder if that will recreate the problem. It is in snap edge channel if you want to help and test it.
Also, testing if it is the combination of Flatpak and Wayland is helpful.
Your problem is surprisingly similar to mine. Currently, the only way to enter text in the text field is to hold down the left alt key, in which case the text starts to be entered and the keyboard shortcuts stop working. I suspect that this bug appeared after recent updates of system packages, I do not remember the details, but there were many different packages in the update manager.
Our problems are similar, I am also forced to use the flatpak version due to the fact that only in it the hardware codecs of my integrated Intel video card work.
I just tested in Fedora 42, and it was working. Then, I upgraded flatpaks, and it upgraded runtime org.kde.Platform; Shotcut uses that for its Qt and that updated Qt from 6.9.1. to 6.9.2. Now, the problem occurs for me too! Forcing the Flatpak to not use Wayland did not make a difference.
Then, I tested daily build 25.8.31, which I happened to have here and is also using Qt 6.9.2. And that reproduced it as well. So, it appears to be a bug in Qt 6.9.2. I will test the other operating systems that are using Qt 6.9.2 in daily builds next.