Spaces graphic freezes, keyboard stops working

[AppleCrisp]

Hey, recently I have been having a problem where randomly after switching a space the little graphic that pops up to show which space you're switching to gets stuck on screen, though you are still able to switch spaces. Also, the keyboard ceases to work as well. The only fix I've found is fast user switching to the login window and back to my account. I'm not able to trigger the problem, and it definitely doesn't happen everytime I switch spaces, but its been happening multiple times per day and is a pretty big nuisance.

Also unrelated question: In my itunes using column view whenever I select an artist it snaps back to the top of the list, though still selecting the artist. Its a weird bug, anyone else having this happen?


Thanks for your help!

 

[CannedChaos]

Same problem here!

Having the same problem - Spaces freezes for minutes at a time and intercepts all keyboard input, effectively locking me out of my Mac. It eventually goes away.

AppleCrisp, could you tell me if you use either BetterTouchTool or TotalFinder? This behaviour is recent and there haven't been any system updates recently - these two programs are the only things I have started using in the past weeks that could potentially be causing it.

EDIT: Ah, maybe I was wrong - it seems to be a Snow Leopard bug after all: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/840646/ (thread has a fix slightly preferable to switching users).

 

[Phasma Felis]

Closing and re-opening the lid on a MacBook breaks it out of this state, as does opening Activity Monitor and killing the dock. Neither one is at all optimal.

The closest I've found to a practical solution is to install Hyperspaces and use its keyboard shortcuts, disabling the native Spaces shortcuts. It's stupid, but it works.

 

[MDMac]

This exact thing happened to me after I installed Logitech's Control Center software. I had the back and forward buttons on my mouse assigned to their respective "back" and "forward" functions in Control Center. Whenever I'd actually try and use the buttons, spaces would activate for some reason and the little graphic would stick to the screen. My keyboard stopped responding soon after.

The way I fixed this was instead of using the actual "back" and "forward" functions present in control center, I assigned the equivalent keyboard shortcut to each of the buttons. (command + [ and command + ])

I have totalfinder and haven't experienced the problem since. Hope this helps.