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

Mulongo oyo etiyamaki na archive. Tuna motuna mosusu soki osengeli na lisalisi

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

  • 1 eyano
  • 2 eza na bankokoso oyo
  • 1 view
  • Eyano yasuka ya 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.