Using Sticky Keys on Wayland without 'latchlock' Behavior

🔗Introduction

I use sticky keys due to accessibility issues. One problem with the "sticky keys" accessibility setting on Ubuntu is the default "latchlock" behavior. As explained in the xkbset man page:

a modifier pressed twice will be locked

So if you accidentally press a modifier key twice while typing, e.g. the control key, it will lock the key leading to very frustrating and confusing behavior. The problem is explained in detail in this Ask Ubuntu question. This makes "sticky keys" virtually unusable for me on Ubuntu. This is true as of the latest 25.04 Ubuntu version.

There is a confusing, outdated, and underdocumented amount of information on the internet about this issue. Here I try to give some background and explain a working solution.

🔗Problem with XKB Set

If you are using X Window (X11) still, you can simply use XKB set to remove the default latchlock option. Like so:

xkbset sticky -twokey -latchlock

However, this does not work on Wayland. Ubuntu is moving to Wayland by default and in the future may not come with X Window included. So this solution may not work in the future. Plus I like all the shinny new features Wayland provides for the modern Ubuntu experience.

🔗Using XKB Directly

According to the Arch Linux Wiki ¹: "The X keyboard extension, or XKB, defines the way keyboards codes are handled in X..." Even though XKB is related to X, it also works on Wayland (the exact details of this are beyond the scope of this post).

We will use XKB to set create our own sticky keys configuration. First, there are rules and symbols files under /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev and /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/, respectively. As you might guess from the path, these are used by xkb for defining keyboard behavior. Note: even though the paths reference X11, this still works with Wayland. You can use the files in these directories as references or at least for keywords to look up.

We will be creating our own symbols and rules files in our home directory; this is cleaner than messing with the global configs under /usr.

This solution may seem long, but it boils down to putting two files in the correct directory structure and making the changes system-wide. This solution works as of Ubuntu 25.04 running with Wayland.

🔗Step 1: Create Directory Structure

Create the following directory structure in your home directory (if it does not already exist):

> tree .config/xkb/
.config/xkb/
├── rules
│   └── evdev
└── symbols
    └── custom

Note: rules/ and symbols/ are directories. evdev and custom are files which we will create in the next step.

🔗Step 2: Create custom file

Create a file called custom inside of .config/xkb/symbols/. Below are the contents using the more command. You can find more info on how this file works by following this footnote².

> more .config/xkb/symbols/custom
partial alphanumeric_keys
xkb_symbols "sticky" {
    key <RALT> {
        symbols = [ ISO_Level3_Shift ],
        actions = [ LatchMods(mods=Alt,clearLocks) ]
    };
    key <LALT> {
        symbols = [ ISO_Level3_Shift ],
        actions = [ LatchMods(mods=Alt,clearLocks) ]
    };
    key <LFSH> {
        symbols = [ ISO_Level3_Shift ],
        actions = [ LatchMods(mods=Shift,clearLocks) ]
    };
    key <RTSH> {
        symbols = [ ISO_Level3_Shift ],
        actions = [ LatchMods(mods=Shift,clearLocks) ]
    };
    key <RWIN> {
        symbols = [ ISO_Level3_Shift ],
        actions = [ LatchMods(Mods=Super,clearLocks) ]
    };
    key <LWIN> {
        symbols = [ ISO_Level3_Shift ],
        actions = [ LatchMods(Mods=Super,clearLocks) ]
    };
    key <LCTL> {
        symbols = [ ISO_Level3_Shift ],
        actions = [ LatchMods(Mods=Control,clearLocks) ]
    };
    key <RCTL> {
        symbols = [ ISO_Level3_Shift ],
        actions = [ LatchMods(Mods=Control,clearLocks) ]
    };
};

Note: The name custom is arbitrary, but we will reference this name in another file. The name "sticky" is also arbitrary.

🔗Step 3: Create evdev file.

Create file evdev under .config/xkb/rules/. Here are the contents of mine using the more command:

> more .config/xkb/rules/evdev
! option    =   symbols
  custom:sticky     =   +custom(sticky)
  
! include %S/evdev

Here is where we reference our custom file name and our "sticky" name (if you use different names, switch them here). The last line of our evdev file ! include %S/evdev just includes the system-level evdev file. So we end up with our rules plus the system rules.

🔗Step 4:

The current way to set these changes in Ubuntu is using gsettings. This also makes it persistent across reboots and shutdowns. From a terminal, run command:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources xkb-options '["custom:sticky"]'

Note: change the names on the last part of this command if you used different names.

🔗Troubleshooting

Originally the process above did not work for me even though I had worked on previous versions of Ubuntu. It turned out that I had weird whitespace issues in the evdev file. I was using tabs instead of spaces. This caused Wayland to fail on login, so I was stuck on a "log in loop". On restart Ubuntu was smart enough to switch from Wayland to X without my knowledge.

Some troubleshooting tips:

• Use echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE to ensure you are running wayland still.
• Warning: If you mess up the files above, Wayland may fail to start on login. Switch to X if that is an option, or delete the .config/xkb/ files as a last resort.

🔗Footnotes

(No AI was used in the making of this post)