Shell – How to disable a keyboard shortcut in gnome-shell

The Linux kernel generates a code each time a key is pressed on a keyboard. That code is compared to a table of keycodes defining a figure that is then displayed.

This process is complicated by Xorg, which starts its own table of keycodes. Each keycode can belong to a keysym. A keysym is like a function, started by typing a key. Xmodmap allows you to edit these keycode-keysym relations.

To get the current keymap table using Xmodmap use:

xmodmap -pke

This will print out the full table in the following format:

keycode <keycode#> = <boundkey> <boundkey>

Before moving anything around be sure to backup the original keycode layout using xmodmap -pke >> $HOME/Xmodmap.orig This will place the file Xmodmap.orig in your users home directory.

Tip: There are also some predefined keycodes (e.g. XF86AudioMute, XF86Mail). Those keycodes can be found in: /usr/include/X11/XF86keysym.h

You can also also edit the keys: Shift, Ctrl, Alt and Super (there always exists a left and a right one (Alt_R=AltGr)).

Here's a quick example of how your configuration would look if you wanted to swap CTRL and Super (Windows Key):

keycode 255  =
!add Shift   = Shift_L Shift_R
!add Lock    = Caps_Lock
add Control  = Super_L Super_R
!add Mod1    = Alt_L Alt_R
!add Mod2    = Mode_switch
!add Mod3    =
add Mod4     = Control_L Control_R
!add Mod5    =

(the ! is used to comment / ignore the line. in this example only Super and Control keys get adjusted)

This configuration would be saved in $HOME/.Xmodmap and loaded with

xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap

You could also start this with xwindows by adding it to your ~/.xinitrc

And if things get hairy you can always revert back to Xmodmap.org.

Any bindings for applications that rely on these keys would also be moved. So make sure that everything remains bound so you don't lose any functionality. It's a tug-of-war match.

I had the same issue in mint 17 xfce (with both wm shortcuts like Ctrl-F1 and keyboard shortcuts like Alt-F2). I don't like the way how I fixed it but I could not find a better solution. First, I searched for all keyboard configuration files:

$ locate xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml
~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml
/etc/xdg/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml
/usr/share/mint-configuration-xfce/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml

Then I removed the file from home, did copies of system files and removed all shortcuts which I wanted to free in both system files. After reboot these shortcuts finally gone.