Karabiner-Elements: Keyboard freezing forcing a restart

This isn’t a “small bug” in my experience. It’s a bug that required me to stop everything I did and do the following: Save everything, restart my Mac, log in, start opening everything again and get back to work. Doing that every week (and sometimes multiple times a day) for about 6 month is insane. It’s even more insane that there’s an open issue for around half a year with no fix.

Also, I know this is a free software and it’s great, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t complain about a major bug that slows down my workflow significantly and requires me to restart my computer a lot. I used Karabiner for 2 small things that I can live without, and that’s why I stop using it.

I’ve experienced this problem a lot. Holding a modifier key and hitting capslock sporadically would cause the issue.

Temporary workaround until this issue gets fixed

I disabled caps lock as the only time I really used it was for writing constant names and disabling it when I accidentally had pressed it. It’s really easy to get used to and I haven’t had this issue since.

• Open System Preferences
• Click “Keyboard”, then “Modifier Keys…”
• Pick “No action” in the “Caps Lock Key” dropdown

Oh and instead of complaining about a bug which is less than 0,001 % of the software, you could choose to be grateful for the remaining working 99,999 % which developers put in time and effort to make available for free. I absolutely love Karabiner despite of this small (but annoying) bug.

Is this really happening??? 🕺 💃

Issue is still present

I’m having a similar problem. I have an external keyboard and hitting the CAPS LOCK key can sometime freeze the keyboard. If I disconnect the keyboard and reattach it the keyboard starts working again but without any of the karabiner modifications. Also the light of the CAPS LOCK on the macbook stays lit…

I ran into this issue around once per week (sometimes even multiple times a day) and had to restart my Mac. I thought it was a stupid Catalina bug, but turns out it was a Karabiner bug?! Also for some reason this issue is opened from October and still no fix? Uninstalling it immediately.

For now I’m using the hidutil solution (no plugins required) in this stackexchange question. I only need to map the <Right-Alt> to <Right-Control> (and <F10> to <Insert> for Windows Remote Desktop). Those who have very simple requirement can take a look.

To make it work automatically I also created an Automator app and added it to my account’s Login Items (System Preferences > Users & Groups).

Oh and instead of complaining about a bug which is less than 0,001 % of the software, you could choose to be grateful for the remaining working 99,999 % which developers put in time and effort to make available for free. I absolutely love Karabiner despite of this small (but annoying) bug.

I’d rather pay someone to fix this bug + if no one complains that what motivation there is to fix this issue?

This issue drives me nuts! Always happen when it is really inconvenient to have a complete system reboot!

There are too many duplicated issues. Is this resolve the issue? https://github.com/pqrs-org/Karabiner-Elements/issues/2114#issuecomment-576489172

To avoid having to restart, you can use an external keyboard or show the Keyboard Viewer from the Input menu and run:

$ sudo pkill karabiner

(although I haven’t tested this in a while)

This will terminate Karabiner and restore keyboard function. Wasn’t able to get Karabiner restarted correctly after this, though, so did need a restart in order to restore mappings.

In case it’s helpful to anyone, disabling caps lock in Apple settings has completely eliminated the problem for me. Of course this is only useful if you have no use for caps lock (which I don’t).

On Sun, Sep 20 2020 at 1:46 PM, Viktor Szakats notifications@github.com wrote:

Me neither, though I keep the the Caps-Lock cover removed and ReiKey.app https://objective-see.com/products/reikey.html uninstalled in an attempt to mitigate this. Was there a Karabiner update to address this? (can’t see a reference here, or in recent ChangeLogs)

[ My machine is also suffering from what it looks like kernel resource exhaustion. Happens every few days to every few hours, when suddenly a list of low-level macOS services prompt for the user account password, while some user apps are (like Safari) killed by the system. Only a reboot solves it. Started roughly around the time I’ve installed Karabiner, but couldn’t find any evidence that they are related — so take this just as a FYI. ]

— You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/pqrs-org/Karabiner-Elements/issues/2035#issuecomment-695834248, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAEVNJ45BWTJM4MG24H4LDDSGZSY5ANCNFSM4JDKR23Q .

Here’s an activity for stale-bot: The bug is still present.

Just encountered this again, again by pressing capslock (perhaps in a combination with another key, but I am not sure). After unplugging and plugging in external keyboard (connected via a dongle):

• internal keyboard is locked up completely with caps light on
• external keyboard is almost working (typing on it now), command is not working, but I believe it’s acting as another modifier (cmd+w gives ∑ character for instance, cmd+t gives †, cmd+v √)

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

This never happened to me until I downgraded from 13 to 12.10 (because the driver failed to activate on restart and I couldn’t get system preferences to show the Allow button). Now it happens several times a day. So I would say it’s been fixed in the new version. Too bad I can’t use it.

Is this really happening??? 🕺 💃

It might be that this just made my Mac completely stuck.

Yesterday I upgraded to this version (did the reactivation of the driver + restart), and about 2-3 hours later my Mac got completely stuck. Keyboard and mouse click were unresponsive, while only the cursor was moving. I tried disconnecting my Mac from my KVM (Gold Touch) but that didn’t help. I had to force shutdown (long press on the start button).

I’m not 100% sure it’s Karabiner’s fault, but for now I’m disabling the Caps Lock again.

@neodoubleo I upgraded to 13.0.0 a few days ago, re-enabled my Caps Lock, and no freezes so far 😃

ck (perhaps in a combination with another key, but I am not sure). After unplugging and plugging in external keyboard (connected via a dongle):

• internal keyboard is locked up completely with caps light on

This describes exactly my problem as well. I am on Catalina 10.15.5 Macbook Pro 13inch 2015. Karabiner-Elements 12.10.0

@tekezo no, it doesn’t look like manipulate LED changes anything. I also run into the issue on a macbook pro, not just the iMac with external keyboard. Thanks, -oo

This has been driving me nuts the past month or so ever since I got my first Mac (MacBook Pro 16-inch, 2019, Catalina 10.15.4). I was only using an external keyboard, mouse and screen on my first day, but ever since then the only thing that was connected to my Mac was the power cable.

The only mention of the caps-lock in my karabiner.json file is manipulate_caps_lock_led:

            "devices": [
                {
                    "disable_built_in_keyboard_if_exists": false,
                    "fn_function_keys": [],
                    "identifiers": {
                        "is_keyboard": true,
                        "is_pointing_device": false,
                        "product_id": 34304,
                        "vendor_id": 1452
                    },
                    "ignore": false,
                    "manipulate_caps_lock_led": true,
                    "simple_modifications": []
                },
                {
                    "disable_built_in_keyboard_if_exists": false,
                    "fn_function_keys": [],
                    "identifiers": {
                        "is_keyboard": true,
                        "is_pointing_device": false,
                        "product_id": 832,
                        "vendor_id": 1452
                    },
                    "ignore": false,
                    "manipulate_caps_lock_led": true,
                    "simple_modifications": [
                        {
                            "from": {
                                "key_code": "fn"
                            },
                            "to": {
                                "key_code": "left_control"
                            }
                        },
                        {
                            "from": {
                                "key_code": "left_control"
                            },
                            "to": {
                                "key_code": "fn"
                            }
                        }
                    ]
                }
            ],

I could live with the workaround of disabling the caps-lock; the mapping that this application provides are so much more worth it (like, who the hell thought of placing the function key to the left of the control?).

@neodoubleo I’ve disabled Capslock and no more keyboard freeze. It’s not perfect but it works.

Thanks, but I was hoping there’d be another way, because I rely on my capslock key a lot. Has anybody figured out how to kill all KE processes and restart, so we don’t need to reboot every time this happens? Thanks, -oo

@neodoubleo I’ve disabled Capslock and no more keyboard freeze. It’s not perfect but it works.