How do I pass the Ctrl-key through to an application? Elementary seems to be swallowing it

Question

My company uses Amazon Workspaces to support remote access to our network.

I ran the client without a hitch on Ubuntu 19.10/20.04 but I just switched to Elementary and now I can't get the application to recognize the Ctrl key when it's pressed.

This is rather critical for everything from bringing up the start menu (Ctrl+Esc) to navigating the UNIX command line through ssh / PuTTY.

I'd initially thought the operating system was swallowing Ctrl, but running 'showkey' inside Terminal shows that's clearly not the case (I hit Ctrl 3 times. It seems Ctrl is keycode 29)

feoh@yamato:~$ sudo showkey
kb mode was ?UNKNOWN?
[ if you are trying this under X, it might not work
since the X server is also reading /dev/console ]

press any key (program terminates 10s after last keypress)...
keycode  28 release
keycode  29 press
keycode  29 release
keycode  29 press
keycode  29 release
keycode  29 press
keycode  29 release
keycode  29 press
keycode  29 press
keycode  29 press
keycode  29 press
keycode  29 press
keycode  29 press
keycode  29 press
keycode  29 press
keycode  29 press
keycode  29 press
keycode  29 press
keycode  29 press
keycode  29 press
keycode  29 press
keycode  29 press
keycode  29 press
keycode  29 press
keycode  29 press
keycode  46 press
^Ccaught signal 2, cleaning up...
feoh@yamato:~$ 

Thanks in advance!

I've fallen in love with Elementary :)

Answer 1

The culprit here is the "Reveal pointer location" checkbox in the Settings Pointer dialog. If you enable it, the Ctrl key will be swallowed in some un-curated applications.

Also, in the latest Amazon workspaces version, Ctrl works in fullscreen mode.