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Comment by quirino | Hacker News Reader

There's this one Chrome (?) bug I've been experiencing for a long time on Linux.

Every once in a while, the browser detects I'm typing "±±±±±±+..." and writes that to any selected text input. It stops when I type anything, but sometimes comes back rather quickly.

I thought it was a keyboard issue, but it doesn't affect Firefox or other applications, only Chrome based ones like Spotify and VSCode.

I've found no other mention of this on the internet and I'd love to to hunt this down and fix it but have no clue where to start. I guess the first step would be to consistently reproduce the bug...

If you're interested, I screen recorded it happening once. Mind there's music playing: https://youtu.be/S7OGTULLsqg.

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> I've found no other mention of this on the internet

Here's one! (different character, but same issue it seems?)

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/1cbarz5/ele...

> and I'd love to to hunt this down and fix it but have no clue where to start. I guess the first step would be to consistently reproduce the bug...

I am not familiar with Chromium at all, and I also don't run Linux on the desktop as I'm guessing from your video you do (?) so take this with a grain of salt...

I would start looking at the focus and key event handlers. e.g. maybe log the contents of pressed_keys and/or step thru the code from the beginning of the focus handler. It looks like this might be the place:

https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/01ab59ae08a38a361d...

https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/de351fd416ec36beeb...

Even if you can't repro it, you may be able to figure out the issue by just reading thru that code with some theories in mind. e.g. Since pressing another key seems to fix it, maybe look at what the code is doing there... my guess is the release event fixes whatever corrupted state it is in upon focus.

Thank you so much for all these pointers!

There's wayland versions of those in the ozone dir.

I vaguely recall experiencing this on my gaming pc (windows). Although with a diff character (W?)

Seems like a race condition, and exacerbated by whatever kb you are using. Are you using a Corsair or Razer kb by any chance? And is it wireless or wired?

I know you suspected it may be a kb issue but have you tried swapping kb to make sure? I junked my old corsair kb because I thought it was just stuck keys after too many “kb smash” events. Don’t recall it happening again after swapping to diff manufacturer (Wooten, wired).

> Every once in a while, the browser detects I'm typing "±±±±±±+..."

Interesting bug! Not exactly following on what triggers the bug. Do you have a ± key on your keyboard (some international one)? Or does it occur after e.g. pressing "+", then "-"? Do you use compose keys? Does it do this randomly?

I don't have a ± key. I'm using swaywm which seems to have no compose key set by default, I've tried all the common ones and they don't act as such.

I haven't been able to detect any pattern to what triggers this, at all. It is always "±".

You could probably set up some keylogging to see if anything special is happening before it, it'd also let you know for sure if it's a keyboard issue or not.

Maybe there's buggy malware involved?

Buggy malware is jusy a feature

That's... horrible.

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