Very slow reaction of application switching hotkeys with Unity

Question

Since upgrading to 12.04, I've noticed that the shortcut keys for switching applications (Super+1, Super+2...) are very difficult to use now. By that I mean that it doesn't seem to register the keypresses simultaneously, and what ends up happening is that when I press Super+1, it will type a "1" into the current application and then open the Unity launcher.

I'm quite certain that I'm hitting them in the correct order, and I noticed this behaviour immediately upon upgrading and never before that on 11.10.

Answer 1

I have this same issue in Ubuntu 14.04.

I was able to work around it seemingly adequately with keyboard shortcuts, binding super + 1, super + 2 etc to empty commands (I'm using a space). These keybindings don't seem to execute even when the command is not empty, but now when I hit super + 1 it seems to behave normally but as a single key event, rather than "super opens launcher", "1 key selects first app".

Answer 2

I just found the following instructions on the Ubuntu help pages. This 'Slow Key' effect may have been enabled by default or accidentally.

To deactivate this delay, hit the gear menu in the upper right corner and select 'System Settings'. In the 'System' section, click on 'Assistive Technologies'.

Here you can find some tabs with many settings. Go to the text input tab and look whether the 'Key delay' function is enabled or not.

Here is also a picture of the settings dialog. I tried it to work with the key delay and it's very hard to press two keys simultaneously.