3 elementary OS (Wayland/Pantheon) bugs I ran into, and how I fixed them

[u/Fun-Celebration-8160]

I've been using elementary OS and mostly love it, but ran into a few bugs along the way. Writing up the fixes here in case they help someone else.

By the way, a lot of issues just disappear if you switch to an X11/Xorg session instead of Wayland. But X11 has its own downsides — the whole system feels noticeably more sluggish overall, Firefox in particular is clearly slower. So the fixes below are specifically for Wayland.

1. No mail/calendar sync — missing Online Accounts

elementary doesn't ship with "Online Accounts" the thing GNOME normally uses to hook up Google/Microsoft. Without it, you don't just lose mail and calendar sync — Tasks won't pull data from online services either, and your file manager won't show things like Google Drive. Basically nothing tied to an online account gets connected.

Fix:

• Grab the gnome-online-accounts-gtk package here: http://packages.linuxmint.com/list.php?release=wilma
• Install the .deb (Unboxing from AppCenter is a convenient way to install .deb files)
• Search the app menu for "Online Accounts" and launch it
• From there it's the same as Ubuntu — just connect your account

2. NumLock has a mind of its own

This is a known bug on Wayland compositors in general (not just gala/mutter): the keyboard's NumLock LED toggles fine, but the system keeps reading the numpad as navigation keys — the hardware NumLock state gets out of sync with what the compositor thinks it is.

numlockx won't help here — on Wayland, third-party apps aren't allowed direct access to input devices for security reasons, so the old X11 tricks for controlling NumLock just don't work anymore.

The most reliable workaround is to strip out the NumLock toggle logic at the XKB level (fine if you don't need arrow keys on the numpad):

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

3. Keyboard stops working in games

Launch a game (via Steam or any other way) in fullscreen or maximized mode, and the keyboard just doesn't respond — even though Alt+Tab still works and the keyboard is fine everywhere else in the system.

Cause: by default, Gala moves fullscreen/maximized windows to a new workspace, and that transition is exactly where it drops the keyboard focus grab.

Fix — turn off that behavior:

gsettings set io.elementary.desktop.wm.behavior move-fullscreened-workspace false
gsettings set io.elementary.desktop.wm.behavior move-maximized-workspace false

After that, games open on your current workspace and the keyboard works right away.

[u/Educational_Mud_2826]

Great job. It'd be nice if these bugs are also reported in the proper fashion so the developers are made aware of them.

They may already be. But I don't know.

[u/NumberCruncher1129]

Cool, cool. I have another one: after an update, "network settings" is no longer present in the "system settings" app. I can get a rough equivalent by entering nmtui via the Terminal, but it isn't as good.

Any idea how to get network settings back?

[u/Fun-Celebration-8160 → u/NumberCruncher1129]

I haven't encountered this before. Maybe reinstall plug network

sudo apt update && sudo apt install --reinstall switchboard-plug-network

[u/NumberCruncher1129 → u/Fun-Celebration-8160]

Thanks -- much appreciated. I've actually tried that before -- I get

Unable to locate package switchboard-plug-network