Error when launching xcolor from the Activities overview: Could not grab pointer

[guihkx]

When trying to launch xcolor from the GNOME's Activities overview, nothing happens. Upon inspecting the system journal, however, you can see this message:

$ journalctl -b
< ... >
May 07 18:25:38 arch xcolor.desktop[164542]: error: Could not grab pointer

System information:

• OS: Arch Linux
• xcolor: 0.5.1
• Desktop: GNOME 42.1

[aerosol]

I have the same stderr output trying to launch xcolor from polybar's click-left hook.

[SkwalExe]

I fixed the problem in my i3wm config by adding --release to the key binding:

bindsym --release $mod+x exec --no-startup-id xcolor...

I think this is because the pointer grab conflicts with the keyboard, so adding a short delay before starting the program also fixes the issue for me: sleep 0.2; xcolor ...

I also had this problem with polybar and adding the timeout fixed it.