Save Custom Keyboard Shortcuts in Gnome – Step-by-Step

dconfgnomegnome-shellgnome3keyboard shortcuts

On my Debian system I've customized my Gnome (Shell) keyboard shortcuts, via System Settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts.

Where do I find the file with these settings so that I can copy the file onto a flash drive for backup and then use it to replace the keyboard shortcuts on other Gnome systems?

Best Answer

Gnome 3 uses DCONF to store the preferences in a single binary file: ~/.config/dconf/user.
As per the Gnome docs, it is recommended to save only the settings that you need and restore them with either dconf or gsettings. However, gsettings is only able to restore the value(s) for one single key at a time (plus, the value must be quoted) and that makes it a bit awkward for this kind of task. Which leaves us with dconf.
So, in this particular case, save the current settings for gnome-shell keyboard shortcuts1: 

dconf dump /org/gnome/shell/keybindings/ > bkp

Here's a bkp sample:

[/]
toggle-message-tray=['<Super>m']
open-application-menu=['<Super>F1']
toggle-application-view=['<Control>F1']
focus-active-notification=['<Super>n']
toggle-recording=['<Control><Shift><Alt>r']

Load the settings on another system:

dconf load /org/gnome/shell/keybindings/ < bkp

1: WM and Media Keys shortcuts belong to different schemas:

/org/gnome/desktop/wm/keybindings/
/org/gnome/mutter/keybindings/
/org/gnome/mutter/wayland/keybindings/
/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/

Note that dconf only dumps non-default values so if you run e.g.

dconf dump /org/gnome/desktop/wm/keybindings/

and don't get any output that means there's no custom WM shortcut defined.

As a side note, dconf-editor is a tool that helps visualizing dconf settings structure, i.e. schema [:path] key value, the type and the default values of any key etc.

For the record, saving the preferences with gsettings:

gsettings list-recursively org.gnome.shell.keybindings > bkp

bkp sample:

org.gnome.shell.keybindings focus-active-notification ['<Super>n']
org.gnome.shell.keybindings open-application-menu ['<Super>F1']
org.gnome.shell.keybindings toggle-application-view ['<Super>a']
org.gnome.shell.keybindings toggle-message-tray ['<Super>m']
org.gnome.shell.keybindings toggle-recording ['<Control><Shift><Alt>r']

Now loading the preferences (as I said, for each line in the backup file you need a separate command and don't forget to quote the values):

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.keybindings focus-active-notification "['<Super>n']"
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.keybindings open-application-menu "['<Super>F1']"
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.keybindings toggle-application-view "['<Super>a']"
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.keybindings toggle-message-tray "['<Super>m']"
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.keybindings toggle-recording "['<Control><Shift><Alt>r']"
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