How to disable Alt 7 shortcut?

Support & Help Requests
#1

I'm running MATE Desktop 1.24.1 on openSUSE Tumbleweed.

There is a keyboard shortcut Alt+7 which acts similarly to Alt+Tab, but it switches between open windows in the same group. For example if I have multiple Firefox windows open, I can switch between them sing Alt+7 (see screenshot). I would like to disable this shortcut as it conflicts with another shortcut in one of the graphical programs I regularly use.

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I checked all options in MATE's keyboard shortcuts preferences, but I didn't find any action with Alt+7 listed there. I also checked keyboard shortcut settings using dconf editor under /org/mate/marco/.

In the windows switcher panel applet's Window List Preferences window, I have "Never group windows".

So far all my attempts have failed to disable Alt+7. Do you have any idea how to do that?

#2

Please show the output of

gsettings list-recursively | grep 7 | grep -i alt

command.

About Firefox - it seems that it has such shortcut configured in itself.

#3 
$ gsettings list-recursively | grep 7 | grep -i alt
org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings begin-move ['<Alt>F7']
org.mate.Marco.window-keybindings begin-move '<Alt>F7'
org.mate.terminal.keybindings switch-to-tab-7 '<Alt>7'

There's only one <Alt>7 which is clearly not relevant here.

Yes, it does, but it conflicts with this one and Firefox only reacts to Alt+num7 where num7 is 7 on the numpad. Also, same behaviour happens for other apps as well, for example here I have 2 sublime text windows open:

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#4

After digging ~1 hour in Marco's source, I found that the setting responsible for this was org.mate.Marco.global-keybindings.switch-group with default value <Alt>grave. It turns out that on my keyboard layout grave (`) is on the key 7 and can be entered with AltGr+7. For some reason Marco was picking up Alt+7 as Alt+grave. This is possibly some minor bug.

I disabled this keybinding and I'm happy now :slight_smile:

1 Like
#5

It's a frequent problem in almost all languages except English, I guess.

[ alt ] + [ tab ] and [ alt ] + [ key above tab ] shortcuts are often associated with « application switcher » and « window from an app' switcher ».

The problem here is the symbol on [ key above tab ] depends on language and keyboard mapping.
⋅ on most english / qwerty keyboards [ key above tab ] is [ ` ] ( grave )
⋅ on a french / azerty, it's [ ² ] and this will vary with language and mapping.

Any app' using [ alt ] + [ key above tab ] shortcut should not rely on the symbol on the key but only on position of that key after keyboard mapping, sort of.

Therefore if the shortcut calls for [ Alt ] + [ grave ] instead of [ Alt ] + [ key above tab ] in many languages you end up with some awkward gesture, depending on [ grave ] position on your keyboard mapping ( which is [ 7è ] key above [ y ] on a french azerty, quite far from [ tab ] ).

It's not only Mate related, it's unfortunately true in all DE.