Ubuntu – How to disable Gnome ctrl+alt+down and ctrl+alt+up shortcut

gnomeUbuntu

There's a shortcut on Discord that enables you to switch between guilds easily. It's Ctrl+Alt+Up and Ctrl+Alt+Down.

The problem is that Gnome uses this shortcut for changing workspaces. I have two monitors so I don't use additional workspaces very often so I opened settings and looked for the shortcut so that I can disable it.

I found that apparently the shortcut to switch workspaces up and down is Super+Page Up and Super+Page Down and I couldn't find the Ctrl+Alt+Up or down shortcut anywhere else. It seems almost as if this shortcut isn't possible to change but I'm sure that's not the case, though I have no idea how to do that.

Best Answer

In general this can happen because the OS (window system) has priority and intercepts this shortcut and stops propagation to your desired application. Solution: Removing the shortcuts using dconf-editor:

Open a terminal
sudo apt-get install dconf-tools (or dconf-editor)
Now run dconf-editor
in dconf-editor go to: /org/gnome/desktop/wm/keybindings/
Find switch-to-workspace-down, put ['disabled'] instead of default
same for switch-to-workspace-up
quit dconf-editor and you are done

I always have this problem when I want to use some Eclipse IDE shortcuts: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=321094

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Connecting over the network (e.g. with SSH) is by far the method that has the best chance of working and the least chance of causing damage that might otherwise be avoidable (such as killing your X session).

If the mouse is working but not the keyboard, it means that X is not completely hosed. Try plugging the keyboard out and back in: this can help if the problem is in the keyboard driver. (It rarely is.) If you have a root terminal or can get one without the help of the keyboard, try typing chvt 2 there (where “typing” means copy-pasting the letters).

Another thing you can try is the magic SysRq key: press Alt+SysRq+R to switch the keyboard away from raw mode, and try Ctrl+Alt+F1 again: this time the key combination should be handled by the kernel and not by X.

Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to kill X server can’t be disabled

You could try disabling the key mapping. First check

xmodmap -pke | grep -i server

If may say something like

keycode  22 = BackSpace Terminate_Server BackSpace Terminate_Server BackSpace Terminate_Server

If you find something like this, re-map the key with xmodmap, replacing the Terminate_Server with BackSpace (case matters here!):

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If it works, execute this command every time you log into your machine. There are dozens of ways to automate this, e.g. by adding it to a new shell script that you add to "startup programs" in your window manager's settings - this varies with your window manager.

Best Answer

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