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A number of games, Emacs, and the terminal make extensive use of the Alt key. Can Unity be configured to respect this key, rather than launching the HUD with it?

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4 Answers

up vote 122 down vote

Open the System Settings application either by going to Session Indicator in Unity panel, or by searching for System Settings using the HUD.

enter image description here

Then go to Keyboard > Shortcuts > Launchers. You can redefine the HUD key with the Key to show the HUD option. Pressing Backspace will disable the HUD shortcut altogether.

Screenshot of Keyboard settings window, in the Launchers section

If you set it to Alt manually, the setting distinguishes between the left and right Alt key. So if you want to maintain general behaviour and still use Alt combinations, this may be an alternate solution for you.

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Setting it to Super (the windows key) makes it the same as Win7 and OSX and doesn't have the issue that Alt has which is used in quite a few programs. – gman Sep 12 '12 at 19:00
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This doesn't work for me. The left alt key still triggers HUD. I wonder if some update occurred which nullified this fix. I'm really surprised that this is even an issue: Emacs anyone? Geez. – Dogweather Sep 29 '12 at 4:13
I set it to Alt+Windows as it kept popping up when I was switching tabs in Firefox. This combo works very well and doesn't interfere with normal Dash operations. – japzone Dec 4 '12 at 15:34
Yes! Finally got rid of it! After all this time I still don't know the purpose of this HUD "Execute command"... Can anyone explain? – Lucas Pottersky May 9 at 14:43
@Lucas Pottersky with HUD you can access all apps menu commands and indicators commands – nastys May 10 at 12:51
up vote 15 down vote

You can use compizconfig-settings-manager Install compizconfig-settings-manager to change the key used to show the HUD.

To install it, run the following command in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

After installing it, open it and go to Ubuntu Unity Plugin.

enter image description here

Click on the button for the option Key to show the HUD and a dialog similar to the one shown below will appear.

enter image description here

Click on Grab key combination and press your desired new key combination and press enter. After that, click on OK button and the new key combination will trigger the HUD from now on.

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This won't work on Unity-2D... – nastys May 2 '12 at 19:14
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@nastys it at least work in Unity 3D very good – Anwar Oct 10 '12 at 8:05
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Keybindings from CCSM may still be respected when running Unity2D. – Takkat Oct 10 '12 at 8:17
Really. When unity is activated some of key settings in standard shortcuts are ignore. Thanks – ruX Apr 2 at 9:24
up vote 7 down vote

Well it's Called HUD. The new feature of Unity.

To stop it from appearing you can disable it's key binding in keyboard shortcuts.

Open system settings by going to Session Indicator in Unity panel.

enter image description here

In system settings select Keyaboard. Under Shortcuts tab, Click on `Key to show the HUD. and press Backspace to disable it. That's it!

enter image description here

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Clearing the key doesn't disable the HUD option – Anwar Oct 3 '12 at 4:46
up vote 5 down vote

In Ubuntu 12.04 I changed shortcut for summoning HUD in System Settings... > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Launchers > Key to show the HUD.

Now my left Alt is happy again :-)

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