ctrl + a doesn't work in browsers

Question

The combination for select all (Ctrl+A) doesn't work in a browser (either if we speak about firefox or chromium). It doesn't work if I try to clik in to the adress bar nor if I try to use it to select what I've written in google search bar at google.com. When I press Ctrl+A it simply takes the cursor before the first letter. This doesn't happen when I use a text editor software like Libre Office. There the shortcut does what's supposed to do, selecting all the text.

What could be the problem?

Solution 1

Had the same problem in 12.10 and it was driving me mad. The problem seemed to be caused by using the Emacs key binding theme as described in the links given by others, except that according to GConf I was still using the default.

I realized that this is now set in dconf Editor irrespective of the settings in GConf.

To change this open dconf Editor and navigate to:
org > gnome > desktop > interface >gtk-key-theme.
If the setting there is Emacs change it to Default.

Or on a terminal:

gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-key-theme

Problem solved. For me at least.

Solution 2

Not sure what's wrong with your keyboard shortcuts, but this might help for Firefox; enter about:config in the address bar and then 'select' && the two options that can be useful are:

browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll

browser.urlbar.doubleClickSelectsAll

(Just set them to the opposite of default :))

Solution 3

I had this same issue happen in both Ubuntu 12.10 and Mint 13. The way I fixed it was by going in through ccsm and changing my themes back to defaults.

The Gtk+keybinding theme EMACs was the issue, when I returned it to default it fixed the issue and all other themes were working fine.

Solution 4

Ubuntu Tweak fixed this problem for me.
This is the updateed tweak tools as of Jan 2015 :

Tweak Tools -> Keyboard and Mouse -> Key theme set to : default

Solution 5

Try

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-key-theme "Default"

as this resets the option without having to go through the tweak tool, which doesn't have the right option available in Themes in 18.04.

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Comments

[ijk]

Also do you get the same problem from a freshly created user account?

[Vladimir Ch]

in many versions of tweektools your answer works for me, thx !

[apkg]

This can be done in later versions of Ubuntu with gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-key-theme "Default"