Xfce Forum

gwendal

Member

Registered: 2013-12-01

Posts: 2

[solved]Cannot remove Key bindings Ctrl+Alt+Left/Right

Hello XFCE community,

my setup is now  a XFCE 4.16 on a Linux Mint 21.1 Vera

I do enjoy it a lot but it tooks me ages to solve my issue with Ctrl+Alt+Arrow left/right key bindings
In fact I solved it while writing this message to ask for a solution ...

My need :
use Ctrl+Alt+Left (or Right) in IntelliJ 
I wanted to remove any mapping of my distribution of those keys.

investigation :

1)Menu > Setting > Keyboard 
    Application Shortcuts

   
And no <Ctrl>+<Alt>+<Left> there...

2) Menu > Settings > Desktop settings -> Configure Xfwm4 > keyboard or  Menu > Settings > Window Manager > Keyboard

And no  <Ctrl>+<Alt>+<Left> there...

3) Then why not give a try to
xfce4-settings-editor

And no  <Ctrl>+<Alt>+<Left> there...

4) So let's do it  the hard way in terminator :
$ locate xfce4-keyboard-short
/etc/xdg/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml
/home/username/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml
/usr/share/mint-artwork/xfce/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml

I edited file (second one)  to remove lines
      <property name="&lt;Control&gt;&lt;Alt&gt;Right" type="string" value="right_workspace_key"/>
      <property name="&lt;Control&gt;&lt;Alt&gt;Down" type="string" value="down_workspace_key"/>
      <property name="&lt;Control&gt;&lt;Alt&gt;Up" type="string" value="up_workspace_key"/>
      <property name="&lt;Control&gt;&lt;Alt&gt;Left" type="string" value="left_workspace_key"/>

without any success either...

Solution

the  reason why <Ctrl>+<Alt>+<left> and <Ctrl>+<Alt>+<Right> were still not working in other app is a problem  with Bindings in :
Menu > Settings > Window Manager > Keyboard

I don't know how it was possible but  in fact there was apparently  2 different bindings registered on the "Left Workspace" and "Right Workspace"
One was visible and one was hidden.

Ctrl Alt Left
and
Shift Alt Left
were assigned to action "Left workspace" at the same time  but only "Shift Alt Left" was visible.

when I clicked on "clear" the "Shift + Alt + Left" was replaced by "Ctrl + Alt + Left" 
and when I click on clear again, it was empty.
After those 2 double clear of keys I was finally able to make use of the "Ctrl+Alt + Left" in Intellij.

I let this message here as a list of Key bindings source of investigations that may be useful and because this double binding situation is not easy to guess...