Shell – Global Keyboard shortcuts in Ubuntu 14.04

gnome-shellkeyboard shortcutsUbuntu

I've just upgraded my distribution from 13.10 to 14.04, which seems to have broken global keyboard shortcuts.

They are still present in the "Keyboard settings" as before. Although media keys are affected, so are other global shortcuts like Ctrl+Alt+T for Terminal. Other keyboard shortcuts work at an application level still, however.

I am also currently using Gnome Shell as my desktop environment, although the Alt+F2 shortcut for shell commands still seems to work.

Does anyone know of how this could have been caused?

Best Answer

I just ran into this issue on my laptop. I'm not certain why, since my install has been working fine for a few months, but just today all the shortcuts in the "Keyboard settings" ceased to work. As is hinted at briefly at the bottom of this thread, there seems to be a bad gnome configuration. I tried removing my ~/.gconf folder (after making a backup first!) and logging out/in, and that fixed my problem. The full steps to fix were:

  1. Open up your home folder by pressing the Windows (or meta) key or by clicking on the first icon in the doc, then typing Files and opening the Files application.
  2. Show hidden files and folders by pressing Ctrl+H.
  3. Find the .gconf folder and rename it to .gconfg.bak.
  4. Hide hidden files and folders again by pressing Ctrl+H.
  5. Log out of your account and back in. while some of your settings may be back to default, your shortcuts should work again.
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