This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Dragging Firefox tabs (v58.0.2) prevents alt-tab switching in KDE

  • 1 ŋuɖoɖo
  • 2 masɔmasɔ sia le wosi
  • 1 view
  • Nuɖoɖo mlɔetɔ ghoultek

more options

Pasting directly from the Manjaro Linux forum thread that I created.


This is a bit of an oddity. When I have multiple Firefox (FF) windows open, each with 3+ tabs, overlaping each other, on the same desktop, if I attempt to drag a tab from FF window #1 to #2, the alt-tab switching is prevented. I’m wondering if this glitch is KDE/Plasma specific, a misconfigured KDE setting issue, or a FF bug. I have my doubts that the issue is KDE specific because I can start a drag of a file in Dolphin, alt-tab to another Dolphin window, and drop the file. I’ve tried changing the switcher settings to the various switchers but it has no effect.

OS: Manjaro 17.1.5 Hakoila
Kernel: x86_64 Linux 4.14.20-2-MANJARO
Uptime: 12h 46m
Packages: 1069
Shell: bash 4.4.18
Resolution: 1920x1080
DE: KDE 5.43.0 / Plasma 5.12.1
WM: KWin
WM Theme: Breath
GTK Theme: Breath [GTK2/3]
Icon Theme: maia
Font: Noto Sans Regular
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1700X Eight-Core @ 16x 3.8GHz [39.8°C]
GPU: GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
RAM: 3488MiB / 16035MiB
Pasting directly from the Manjaro Linux forum thread that I created. ------ This is a bit of an oddity. When I have multiple Firefox (FF) windows open, each with 3+ tabs, overlaping each other, on the same desktop, if I attempt to drag a tab from FF window #1 to #2, the alt-tab switching is prevented. I’m wondering if this glitch is KDE/Plasma specific, a misconfigured KDE setting issue, or a FF bug. I have my doubts that the issue is KDE specific because I can start a drag of a file in Dolphin, alt-tab to another Dolphin window, and drop the file. I’ve tried changing the switcher settings to the various switchers but it has no effect. OS: Manjaro 17.1.5 Hakoila Kernel: x86_64 Linux 4.14.20-2-MANJARO Uptime: 12h 46m Packages: 1069 Shell: bash 4.4.18 Resolution: 1920x1080 DE: KDE 5.43.0 / Plasma 5.12.1 WM: KWin WM Theme: Breath GTK Theme: Breath [GTK2/3] Icon Theme: maia Font: Noto Sans Regular CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1700X Eight-Core @ 16x 3.8GHz [39.8°C] GPU: GeForce GTX 1060 6GB RAM: 3488MiB / 16035MiB

All Replies (1)

more options

Another user in the Manjaro Linux forum said


My experiments say this: If I click on a tab then drag, I cannot alt-tab to another firefox window to drop it. If however I click on the tab, then alt-tab then I can place the tab on the other window. This is regardless of the number of instances/tabs open. It behaves the same in XFCE and KDE for me.


Your dolphin comments got me thinking and investigating more. And I you are correct, Firefox is doing something (bad) that blocks the alt-tab after you start the drag. I even tested it with Chrome and you CAN alt-tab after you start the drag.

I googled, but my google foo isn’t that powerful, I did find a single post of something using XFCE and complaining about the exact same issue, so others are seeing the issue, however a search of https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ doesn’t turn up anything. You could try openning a bug and hopefully it would get fixed.