Keyboard Shortcuts
- LaTroy
Problem
It is possible to pass keyboard shortcuts (hotkeys) into a kasm session. For example doing "ctrl + w" to close a program, window tab, or document. Currently when performing this action, the key combination is passed to the local browser, not inside in the kasm session as intended.
Solution
There are a few options that will help with common shortcuts like “ctrl +w” and “ctrl +t” that would normally get intercepted by the user’s host browser.
Install the Kasm Workspaces Progressive Web App PWA
From an administrator perspective you need to ensure Kasm is running with certs trusted by the users local browser
After that, the users will get an option to install the PWA when they visit the deployment.
When running Workspaces via the PWA, you will notice there is no browser navigation bar - it behaves more like a normal application. In this mode common shortcuts like “ctrl + t” and “ctrl + w” will be passed down to the Kasm session container
Run the user’s local chromium based browser in “app” mode
You can create shortcuts for your users that open their local chromium based browser to Kasm in “app” mode. (e.g
chrome.exe --app=https://kasm.example.com). This largely mimics the experience of a PWA.
Run the session in full screen mode
When the users launches the session they can toggle full screen from the Kasm Control Panel pop-out on the left hand side or from their browser’s setting menu.
In all cases, the host OS still will capture “meta” keys (e.g the windows key).
Custom Images:
In most scenarios building a custom image specifically to solve key shortcuts is not needed.
The except to this is if there is a custom keyboard combination that, for example, may be a default on windows, but isn’t on Ubuntu (or whatever the base OS is for the workspace image). In this scenario building a custom image would help. In these cases, you would need to define a custom keyboard shortcut within the custom image. We do not have a guide for that at the moment.
Impacted Versions:
Issues were first observed on the following versions, but may impact other versions as well.
1.14.0
Resolved Versions:
The issue is no longer applicable for the following and newer versions.
None
Related Docs:
Related articles
Links to related kb articles in the Confluence project