YouTube loses keyboard focus and jumps to Opera address bar

HaxeZeta

HaxeZeta

Hi,

When watching YouTube in normal windowed mode, the video player randomly loses keyboard focus while I use the Left and Right Arrow keys to rewind or fast-forward. When this happens, the focus jumps to Opera's address bar, so the arrow keys stop controlling the video.

The issue does not happen in fullscreen mode and only happens in Opera. I tested other browsers and they work correctly.

I have already tried:

Opera Private/Incognito mode
Disabling all extensions
Disabling Video Pop-out / Automatic Picture-in-Picture
Restarting Opera
Clicking the video player again before using the arrow keys

The problem still happens consistently.

Opera version: 133.0.5932.85

Has anyone experienced this or found a solution?

HaxeZeta

HaxeZeta

Update:

I have confirmed that this issue is not limited to YouTube. Opera can also randomly move the keyboard focus from other websites to the address bar.

I have also reproduced the problem in a completely clean portable installation of Opera, using a new profile with default settings, no imported data, no account and no extensions installed.

It happens less frequently in the portable version, but it still occurs. Therefore, the issue does not appear to be caused by my regular profile, extensions or custom settings.

HaxeZeta

HaxeZeta

Update: focus loss captured with keyboard + UI Automation logging

I have managed to capture the issue with a Windows UI Automation focus logger combined with a keyboard-state logger.

The bug occurred at approximately 00:32:58.816.

Immediately before the focus changed, I was only pressing the Left/Right Arrow keys:

00:32:58.530 KEYDOWN LEFT
00:32:58.623 KEYUP LEFT
00:32:58.715 KEYDOWN LEFT

00:32:58.816 FOCUS
Name: Campo de direcciones (Address field)
ControlType: ControlType.Edit
ClassName: AddressTextfieldView
AutomationId: view_1005

00:32:58.994 KEYUP LEFT
00:32:59.042 KEYDOWN RIGHT
00:32:59.135 KEYUP RIGHT

So the focus moved to Opera's address bar while the Left Arrow key was still being held down.

The logger was also monitoring the usual keys that could intentionally focus the address bar, including:

Ctrl
L
F6
Tab
Alt
D

None of those keys were pressed around the time of the issue.

This means that no normal address-bar shortcut such as Ctrl+L, F6 or Alt+D was triggered when the focus moved.

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer

I tried with https://file-examples.com/storage/fe42a6a13e6a80e779c3cf0/2017/04/file_example_MP4_480_1_5MG.mp4 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAGnKpE4NCI in Opera 134.0.5954.56 64-bit on Windows 11. Hammered left and right while the seek bar is focused to rewind and fast forward. Tried for quite a while and can't seem to reproduce it.

I also tried focusing a blank spot on the page at https://example.com/ and hitting left and right a lot to see if I could trigger it that way. Couldn't reproduce it there either.

You can try updating Opera to the newest build to see if you can still reproduce.

You can test with the "Hardware Media Key Handling" flag at the URL opera://flags/#hardware-media-key-handling disabled to see if there's any difference. Sometimes that flag (on by default) causes issues.

But, I'm guess the issue will still be there for you where it's just something that I can't personally reproduce.

HaxeZeta

HaxeZeta

Thanks a lot for taking the time to try to reproduce the issue.

I have tested everything you suggested, but unfortunately the problem is still happening.

My current version is:

Opera One 134.0.5954.56
Stable channel
Windows 11 64-bit, fully updated
Chromium 150.0.7871.224

Opera reports that it is fully up to date.

I also disabled:

opera://flags/#hardware-media-key-handling

and restarted Opera, but the issue still occurs exactly the same way.

I have also confirmed that the problem happens both in my normal Opera installation and in a completely clean portable installation, with a fresh profile, no extensions, no imported data and no account signed in.

The issue only happens in Opera. I have tested the same behavior in Edge, Firefox and Chrome on the same PC, and I cannot reproduce it in any of those browsers.

So at this point it seems to be something specific to Opera on my system rather than a general Windows or keyboard issue.

Thanks again for testing it on your side.