How to disable text orientation shortcuts?

[Oxymore]

Hi,

I’ve been annoyed by LibreOffice changing my text orientation out of nowhere for a few weeks now, suddenly making me write from right to left. I finally figured out that despite disabling the Ctrl+Shift+D and Ctrl+Shift+A shortcuts, there are still seemingly hard-coded Ctrl+LShift and Ctrl+RShift shortcuts to switch text orientation. Problem : I often still have Ctrl pressed after hitting Ctrl+I for instance when I hit my shift key to start a new sentence in italic. It has become quite a big issue for me now, is there a way to disable those two extra shortcuts ? They don’t appear in the shortcuts list unlike the others.

Thanks in advance and have a nice day,
Oxy

[ajlittoz]

Ctrl+xShift are likely Window$ shortcuts interpreted before reaching LO. Try to see in the keyboard system settings what can be done. Ican’t help you more because I am under Linux.

[Oxymore]

unfortunately i searched about this because Windows was part of the suspects but I can’t find anything about it. First time happening to me in 15 years of using various Windows versions and it’s on LibreOffice, can’t find anything in keyboard or language or typing parameters, even online nothing seems to come up when i search for Ctrl+Shift shortcuts… If you have anything about windows doing this please feel free to send a link or something. Thanks anyway.

[PKG]

@Oxymore

It has become quite a big issue for me now,

Up through version 25.8, you could disable it.

[Oxymore]

Very interesting. Thanks for pointing it out. Two ideas :

1. Would there be a safe way to return to an earlier version ? How should I proceed to do this ?
2. Could there be some parameters file or regkey I could manually edit to disable it ?

[EarnestAl]

It could be a Windows problem as in this unresolved question for the same issue in Word, Disable ctrl+shift to change text direction - Microsoft Q&A
.
I tried to use Windows Power Toys Keyboard Manager to remap Ctrl+Shift(Right) to Ctrl+Shift(Left), that is, both set the text to LTR but it returned a fail.
.
You could return to an earlier version by uninstalling the current version and installing an older version from the archive, Index of /libreoffice/old .
You would be better off to file a bug report, How to Report Bugs in LibreOffice - The Document Foundation Wiki

[bantoniof]

@EarnestAl

I tried to use Windows Power Toys Keyboard Manager

Now I have found a solution that works in my system (Win10) with PowerToys:
1: Install PowerToys from the Windows Shop or GItHub (Releases · microsoft/PowerToys · GitHub)
2. Enable and go to KeyboardManager
3. Reasign the Right Shift Key to Left Shift Key.


This option tricks the keyboard into thinking that when you press the right shift key you are pressing the left shift key

• It is fully functional for writing capital letters but disables the right to left writing change.
• To revert the changes, also in PowerToys, disable remapping this key.

[Oxymore]

While this works, this isn’t a solution per se. It’s a workaround. I have some apps that are sensitive to the difference between LShift and RShift though, so I still need to find either a way to deal with Windows, Libre Office, or to enable the “applies only to specific apps” option of Keyboard Manager that is currently greyed.

For the time being I’ll do this, but ultimately this will cause more issues in the future when I’ll have forgotten about this key remap and wonder why RShift acts as LShift…

Still waiting for an actual fix, i’ll probably make a report as EarnestAl suggested, thanks everyone.

[cwolan]

@Oxymore

Still waiting for an actual fix, i’ll probably make a report as EarnestAl suggested, thanks everyone.

LibreOffice Release Notes 26.2 — Writer:

• 26.2.5 The Ctrl + LShift and Ctrl + RShift hotkeys to control paragraph direction are now disabled by default. To enable them, set the Complex Text Layout language to an RTL language in Default Languages for Documents. (Jonathan Clark, TDF) tdf#169787

As per Release Plan: version 26.2.5 is to be released in Week 29.

It does work with the latest 26.2.5 dev release (2026-Jun-22 17:47)


my configuration:
Version: 26.2.5.0.0+ (X86_64)
Build ID: eb04445c1f8be95574de47891ea40f559f001dd6
CPU threads: 8; OS: Windows 11 X86_64 (build 26200); UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (de_DE); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded

[Oxymore]

Wonderful news ! I’ll keep an eye open to update when this version releases. Thanks for sharing !