Persistent On-Screen Keyboard on Fresh Install of Zorin OS 18

Hello,

I have a persistent on-screen keyboard (OSK) that appears on my user session, even when using a physical keyboard. This happened after a fresh installation of Zorin OS 18.

System Information:

  • OS Version: Zorin OS 18
  • Hardware: X99 Titanium D4 Motherboard, Xeon 2670v3 CPU, NVIDIA GTX 1060 GPU
  • Installation: Fresh install with LVM on a single SSD.

Problem: The on-screen keyboard appears automatically and cannot be permanently disabled.

Troubleshooting Steps Already Taken (all failed):

  1. Turned off "On-Screen Keyboard" in Settings -> Accessibility. The keyboard still appears.
  2. Forced the setting via terminal with gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.a11y.applications screen-keyboard-enabled false. The keyboard still appears.
  3. Completely uninstalled the caribou package (sudo apt remove caribou) and rebooted. The keyboard still appears.
  4. Verified that the onboard package is not installed (apt policy onboard).
  5. Checked IBus settings (ibus-setup), but the option for a virtual keyboard is not present in this version.
  6. Used dconf-editor to verify the key /org/gnome/desktop/a11y/applications/screen-keyboard-enabled. The value is correctly set to false.
  7. Checked the accessibility menu on the GDM login screen and confirmed the on-screen keyboard is disabled there (also tried toggling it on and off).

Despite all these steps, a virtual keyboard (which seems to be from IBus, based on a System Monitor check) continues to appear. This seems to be a bug where the system is ignoring all user and system-level configurations.

Any help or guidance on how to fix this or where to look next would be appreciated. Thank you.

Update: By checking the System Monitor, I can confirm that the virtual keyboard process is the ibus-daemon itself. Killing this process temporarily closes the keyboard.

  • make sure gnome shell extension manager is installed
  • open extension manager
  • scroll down to 'Zorin Screen Keyboard Panel Button' and switch it off.
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