Ubuntu – How to disable Ctrl+Alt+Left/Right

On current Ubuntu metacity is no longer the default window manager, so the accepted solution no longer works. Instead there's a different setting that you can change. Set the key combination to an empty array.

In a terminal:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys terminal '[]'

To undo the change again

gsettings reset org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys terminal 

In case this changes again, I found this by looking for all settings that mention "terminal"

gsettings list-recursively | grep terminal

I had this problem because it interferes with an Emacs keybinding to transpose sexps.

Unity maps Ctrl+Alt+S to Windows > Toggle Shaded State, whatever that is. If you disable this shortcut, then its passed to whatever application is in that window, including emacs. It is quite confusing though.