Ubuntu – Something blocks Ctrl+Alt+left/right-arrow keyboard combination

18.04gnome-shellkeyboardshortcut-keys

In Ubuntu 18.04 I'm not able to assign Ctrl+Alt+← or Ctrl+Alt+→ to anything. To be precise I may bind it to something, but it doesn't work when using the keyboard combination, up/down arrows do however work.

See screenshot here .

The strange thing is that the system detects the keyboard combinations when assigning a key, but not when trying to use them. As a result the keyboard combinations don't work in any other programs either.

Best Answer

Ctrl+Alt+← and Ctrl+Alt+→ are default shortcuts for "switch to workspace left" and "switch to workspace right" respectively. You can verify that by running

gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-to-workspace-left

(and right in place of left).

Since by default GNOME shell has single column workspaces these shortcuts show no effects at all (unless you try something like this).

To unbind these keyboard combinations, run

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-to-workspace-left "[]"

(similarly for right). Then you'll be able to use these combinations for your custom shortcuts.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Ubuntu 18.04.1 not recognizing Ctrl + Alt

This is a known issue with GNOME shell, shortcuts get triggered on-keypress instead of on-release (see this). Since you have Ctrl+Alt set to change the keyboard layout, whenever you attempt to press Ctrl+Alt+something, the shell registers only Ctrl+Alt immediately after you've pressed Alt and changes the layout.

You can disable this Ctrl+Alt combination using (GNOME) Tweaks. First install it by running

sudo apt install gnome-tweaks

and use the tool to disable the combination. Refer to this for details: Ubuntu 17.10 and later: can't change the input switching shortcut to alt+shift

Ubuntu – Unable to use keyboard shortcut combination including Alt+Shift

This should be a comment but I am not allowed to comment due to my low reputation... Still thought this might help track down the issue.

I have a very similar but slightly different issue since I updated to Ubuntu 20.04. Alt + Shift combinations work on my built in keyboard but not on my external keyboard (Kinesis Freestyle 2, everything else works fine). Things worked fine under Ubuntu 18.04.

The out put of cat /etc/default/keyboard | grep -v ^# | sort -u reads as follows: BACKSPACE="guess" XKBLAYOUT="us,gr" XKBMODEL="pc105" XKBOPTIONS="grp:alt_shift_toggle,grp_led:scroll" XKBVARIANT="altgr-intl,"

The output of lsusb reads as below Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 004: ID 138a:0097 Validity Sensors, Inc. Bus 001 Device 003: ID 04ca:7067 Lite-On Technology Corp. Integrated Camera Bus 001 Device 024: ID 8087:0a2b Intel Corp. Bus 001 Device 022: ID 1c4f:0032 SiGma Micro Usb Mouse Bus 001 Device 005: ID 056a:509f Wacom Co., Ltd Pen and multitouch sensor Bus 001 Device 021: ID 058f:9410 Alcor Micro Corp. Keyboard Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Ubuntu 18.04.1 not recognizing Ctrl + Alt

Ubuntu – Unable to use keyboard shortcut combination including Alt+Shift

Related Question