Keyboard unresponsive using Spaces in Snow Leopard

Shortly after the release of Snow Leopard, some users have reported a problem where the keyboard stops working after switching spaces. While the mouse remains responsive, the keyboard becomes dysfunctional for any key input, possibly except for the keyboard shortcut to switch spaces again. In many instances, the space selection “window” seen to right refuses to disappear and stays on top of other windows, though this is not always the case. Cnet has documented this issue before:

This problem seems to happen only when people use keyboard shortcuts to select a specific Space, rather than when activating the Spaces grid view. The Spaces indicator will activate and then seem to remain as the foremost process, not quitting or allowing other applications to use the keyboard.

Spaces is integrated into the Dock; therefore, if this problem occurs, you can regain control of your keyboard by force-quitting the Dock. Since the mouse should be working, you can navigate to the Utilities folder and open “Activity Monitor.” From here, highlight the Dock process and click the “Quit” button, which should make the dock disappear and reappear, releasing the hold on the keyboard.

In case you didn’t click on the article link, that article was posted over three months ago; the lack of attention to this problem from Apple is getting somewhat annoying. Some users have reported that if you use an external keyboard, unplugging it and plugging it back in will fix the problem. But for us MacBook owners, force-quitting the Dock is the only workaround.

Instead of navigating to the Activity Monitor, I’ve compiled an Automator script to force-quit the Dock for you. Just keep it on your desktop (or in your Dock) to relaunch the Dock and fix the Spaces issue whenever you need it.

Click here to download.

Related posts:

1. Microsoft Office ‘Spaces’ issues finally fixed?
2. SmackBook with Leopard Spaces

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 2:23 pm and is filed under Mac OS X. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.