Every now and then, when I disconnect my laptop from the secondary monitor in my office and put it into suspend with just the right timing (depending on the phase of the moon), the next time I open it up back at home the screen will be off (no backlight, even!). Ctrl+Alt+F2 works; the screen will turn on and display a terminal, but I've yet to find anything I could type in there to restore my screen back on Ctrl+Alt+F1.

I used to think all hope was lost, until one day, I finally discovered the "Fix My Screen" Key.



When pressed a couple of times, the Fix My Screen key (also known as the "projector key," the "Win+P key," or by its X11 keysym XF86Display) would cause KDE to cycle through the various multi-display modes. When it did this, it would realize that I have, in fact, only one connected display (the laptop monitor), and begin outputting to it, so that I could continue living my life.

Why am I talking in the past tense? Well, earlier today when my screen blanked out, I was dismayed to discover that the pressing this key a few times no longer does anything! After finally giving up and rebooting, I discovered that this is because it apparently now does this instead:



It presents a UI in the center of the screen. That I can't see.

Pressing the key multiple times does nothing. It does not respond to any keyboard events. The only way to interact with this UI is through the mouse. That I can't see.

Its position in the center of the screen makes it impossible for me to reliably do this without the risk of accidentally clicking some "Launch Nukes" button. So.... I'm really not sure what I'm supposed to do anymore. Maybe Alt+Space a new Konsole window into existence and try to blindly type xrandr commands? I dunno... help?


---

Arch Linux
Linux 4.18.6-arch1-1-ARCH x86_64 GNU/Linux
plasmashell 5.13.5
Lenovo Thinkpad T430s