Unity – How to Revert Alt-Tab Behavior to Switch Between Windows on Current Workspace

application-switcherunity

Enabling Bias alt-tab sorting to prefer windows on the current viewport as described here made no difference. How can I get back the exact same behavior as 11.04, so that alt-tab only switches between windows on the current workspace?

Simply disabling the alt-tab and shift-alt-tab keybindings on the unity switcher seems to have helped, but it still switches workspaces on me sometimes. For example, if I give a terminal window focus then press alt-tab, it switches to another terminal window on any workspace before trying to switch on the same workspace. Also, the Unity switcher still shows up when I alt-tab then hold alt even though I removed its alt-tab keybinding.

Best Answer

You can revert back to the older style of window switcher by enabling the Static Application Switcher plugin in CompizConfig Settings Manager:

Steps:

  1. CompizConfig Manager is gotten through sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager (thanks to @donbright)

  2. sudo apt-get install compiz-plugins to get the static application switcher to show up. (thanks to @Milimetric)

  3. CompizConfig Manager is started by typing ccsm in terminal (thanks to @donbright)

  4. Disable the keyboard shortcuts for Unity's switcher by unchecking CompizConfig Settings Manager ▸ Desktop ▸ Ubuntu Unity Plugin ▸ Switcher ▸ Key to start the switcher ▸ Enabled and Key to start the switcher in reverse ▸ Enabled

  5. Enable the Static Application Switcher by checking CompizConfig Settings Manager ▸ Window Management ▸ Static Application Switcher ▸ Enable Static Application Switcher

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