By default, Ubuntu comes with a set of keyboard shortcut that you can use straightaway. However, some of these keyboard shortcuts might not be desirable, troublesome, or obstructive and disrupting your productivity. For example, if you have a keyboard with a media button, that button is automatically mapped to Rhythmbox. If your favorite media player is Banshee, or Exaile, you might want to change the keyboard shortcut to your favorite application.
There are several ways to manage your keyboard shortcut in Linux. You can do it via Xmodmap (and Xkeycaps), Gnome Keyboard Shortcut or Compiz. In this article, we will focus mainly on Gnome Keyboard Shortcut and Compiz.
Gnome Keyboard Shortcut
The Gnome keyboard shortcut is by far the easiest way to assign/remap a shortcut key in any Gnome-based distro. Go to System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts.
From here, you can scroll down the list to find the particular keyboard shortcut you want to change, click on the existing shortcut (and see the entry change to “New Shortcut”), and press the new keyboard shortcut that you want to assign to. For example, the default shortcut to launch the Run Application dialog is “Alt + F2“. If I want to change it, I will click on the Alt + F2 entry, follow by the new key, say “Alt + F12“.
In addition, you can also create your own keyboard shortcut and assign it to run an application, a command or a script. Click the “Add” button. It will prompt you to enter the name and command.
After you have added the command, you will see a new entry with the shortcut field “Disabled”. Click on it.
Press the keyboard buttons that you want to assign to launch this command. That’s it.
You can also use the above method to overwrite a default shortcut key. For example, the default behavior of the “Delete” button in your keyboard is to move your file to the trash. You can, however, create a new shortcut and map the “Delete” button to shred the file beyond recovery. It will overwrite the default behavior.
Note: If you want to remove the overwrite, you can remove the shortcut entry and restart your current session (logout and login again). The default behavior will restore.
Compiz
Compiz is slightly more complicated than Gnome Keyboard Shortcut, but it is more versatile and give you more option.
Before we start, make sure you have Compiz Config Setting Manager installed, either from Ubuntu Software Center or from the terminal:
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-managerLaunch Compiz Config Settings Manager (System -> Preferences -> CompizConfig Settings Manager)
Click the “Commands” option.
Enter the command in the command field. It can be an application, a command or even a path to script.
Next, go to the Key Bindings tab. Click the “Disabled” button for the command line that you have entered just now.
Check the “Enabled” checkbox and click the “Grab key combination” button. Press the keyboard shortcut and add any modifier key (Ctrl, Shift or Alt) if necessary. Click OK.
That’s it. What other ways do you use to assign/remap keyboard shortcuts in your distro?
Image credit: Mike Traboe
Monday, February 7, 2011
How to Assign/Remap Keyboard Shortcuts For Better Productivity [Linux]
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Assign a Shortcut Key to Activate an Open Application Window on Linux
We’ve already shown you how to customize shortcut keys in any Linux application, but for today’s lesson we’ll take it a step beyond—and assign a shortcut key that switches an open application to be the currently focused window.
The idea is that instead of using the mouse or flipping through a set of windows in the Alt+Tab switcher, you can quickly assign a hotkey to your most important windows and switch to them with a single keystroke, saving yourself a lot of time. To accomplish this task on Linux, we’ll use the excellent AutoKey utility.
Note: if you want the Windows way to do this, you can accomplish the task with AutoHotkey easily.
The Scenario
Since I do most of my work in Google Chrome, I need to have it accessible as quickly as possible and I generally assign the Alt+G key combination to switch to my open Chrome window.
Installing AutoKey
You’ll want to open up the Synaptic Package Manager and do a quick search for autokey, check the box, and then install the package. You could also install it using the apt-get command like this:
sudo apt-get install autokey
Assigning a Shortcut Key to an Application Window
Open up the AutoKey configuration screen from the system tray icon, and then create a New Script from the menu, and then paste in the following code:
window.activate(‘Google Chrome’)
You’ll want to use the Set button next to the Hotkey setting, and assign your preferred hotkey—mine is Alt+G, though you’ll want to make sure that you use a lowercase g while setting the hotkey—if you set it using an uppercase letter it won’t behave right.
Once you save the setting and minimize or close the AutoKey configuration screen, you can hit the Alt+G shortcut key combination anytime you want to switch to the open window.
How Does This Work?
When you hit the shortcut key that you’ve assigned, AutoKey will run the script that you’ve added—in this case, it’s a simple Python script that uses the wmctrl functions to control open windows. Here’s the syntax for the window.activate function, which switches the specified window to be the active window:
window.activate(‘partial window title here’)
Basically all you need to do is match part of the window title, and in the case of Google Chrome, the window title always has “- Google Chrome” at the end.
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