Keyboard and mouse input stop working after key press in a specific .toe (persists even after deleting all operators)

Bugs
1

Hi, I’m running into a strange issue in TouchDesigner and would appreciate any insights.

Summary

In a specific .toe file, all keyboard input stops working after any key press, and after that, mouse input also becomes unresponsive (the UI still appears to be running, but I can’t interact with anything).

Details

  • The issue does NOT occur in a new empty project

  • It only happens in this specific .toe file

  • It happens with any key (not specific shortcuts)

  • It occurs regardless of IME (both English and Japanese input)

  • It often triggers while editing parameters, but not limited to that

  • Once triggered:

    • Keyboard input is completely dead

    • Mouse clicks also stop working (cursor still moves)

    • The timeline / visuals seem to continue running

What I’ve Tried

  • Stopping playback → no effect

  • Disabling cooking on all operators → no effect

  • Deleting all operators from the project → still occurs

  • Copying the entire project1 into a new .toe → issue persists

  • Removing UI / Panel / Script / Replicator / Extensions → no change

  • Trying both Python and Tscript in Textport → session becomes unresponsive

  • Comparing with another .toe using toediff → difficult due to freezing

Additional Observations

  • The issue seems to persist even when the project is effectively empty

  • It started after saving the file at some point (not sure what exactly changed)

  • It feels like the problem is not tied to operators, but rather something stored in the .toe state itself (possibly UI/pane/input state?)

Environment

  • TouchDesigner version: (2025.32280)

  • OS: Windows 11

  • AMD Ryzen7 9700X

  • RTX4070

Question

Has anyone experienced something similar, where:

  • Input breaks after a key press

  • The issue persists even after deleting all operators

  • The problem seems tied to the .toe file itself rather than the network

Any ideas on what could cause this or how to recover the project would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

2

Can you post your .toe file which has the issue?

3

Thanks for your reply!

Since this is a project for work, it’s a bit tricky to share the .toe file.

I did try staggering the initialization timing (delaying the loading of my custom .dll lighting system), and so far it seems to have fixed the issue.

I’ll continue testing, but really appreciate the suggestion!

4

Glad you found a work around for now. If you do continue to have problems, you can also e-mail us project files directly to support@derivative.ca if you can’t post them publicly.

As a note, I’ve seen behaviour somewhat like this in a debug environment where we’re interrupting TouchDesigner and it misses important UI messages from the operating system. However, I’m not aware of a way to reproduce that in a production situation, so an example would definitely be helpful in tracking it down.

5

Thank you. As mentioned above, by adjusting the timing of DLL loading during startup, the issue was temporarily resolved, and the project was successfully completed last week.

For future improvement and investigation, I would be happy to provide a reproducible example. I will send the project directly to support@derivative.ca.

I hope it will be helpful. Thank you for your support.