Inspired by Aurélien Gâteau’s blogpost and the thread on KDE Forums, I decided to change my global KWin short-cuts as well to see how it fares.

Shortcuts¶

As proposed in the forum thread and by Aurélien, I have concentrated my desktop/window manipulation short-cuts around the Meta key.

In addition I figured out that to navigate virtual desktops and activities I practically only use the following effects:

• Activities bar
• Activities menu (which I have bound to right-click on background)
• Desktop grid
• Show all windows on all desktops

Here are the most important changes:

Virtual desktops¶

• Meta+F? – goes to the desktop number ?
• Meta+Shift+F? – moves/shifts the active window to desktop number ?
• Meta+Down – shows all desktops in the grid effect

Window management¶

• Meta+F – puts window in full-screen mode (i.e. maximises and hides windows decorations)
• Meta+Up – maximises the window (or de-maximises it)
• Meta+Left – window occupies the left half of the screen
• Meta+Right – window occupies the right half of the screen
• Meta+PageUp – keep window above others
• Meta+PageDown – keep window below others
• Meta+Tabr – show all windows from all desktops
• Meta+Esc – close window
• Meta+Ctrl+Esc – kill window

Launchers, Activities, etc.¶

• Meta+A – opens the Activities bar
• Meta+Space – Krunner
• Meta+Enter – Yakuake

How does it feel¶

I actually quite like it and it does not need a lot to get used to. It is far easier to remember than the KDE Plasma default. And I am saying this after years and years of using the default as well as years of using a different custom set up (concentrated on Alt).

Personally, I think it would make sense to adopt such a change of defaults. But if that does not happen, I know I can still just change it myself locally …and I will ☺

hook out → taking a final sip of honey-sweetened Yorkshire Gold tea (Taylors of Harrogate) and going to sleep