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After switching to Ubuntu 18.04 from Ubuntu 16.04 most of the shortcuts associated with the Super key (Windows logo key) stopped working.

It was pretty convenient to press Super+w to show all windows in the current workspace (I know about the Ctrl+tab which (imao) is just horrible, imagine when you have a lot of windows in the workspace, that is crazy). In Ubuntu 16.04 one could use Super+w and then use the arrow keys to move over windows; this is way easier than Ctrl+tab.

I found that in Ubuntu 18.04 just by pressing the Super key one get a similar behavior to Super+w as that in Ubuntu 16.04. However, the one I am really interested is in the shortcut from Ubuntu 16.04 Super+Shift+w which allows one to show ALL windows from ALL workspaces.

Has anyone got this feature? Am I missing something?

EDIT: I just remembered there was another beautiful shortcut to show all windows in all workspaces of an application, it was Ctrl + Shift + Alt + w. It was pretty convenient when having multiple Google Chrome windows spread around the workspaces.

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  • Ubuntu 18.04 comes with GNOME instead of Unity by default. However you can still install and use Unity: askubuntu.com/q/1040890/480481
    – pomsky
    May 28, 2019 at 7:13
  • 1
    @pomsky I am not sure whether do I really need to switch the whole environment just to get the show ALL windows from ALL workspaces behaviour. That seems like when in the old years one had to install windows only to be able to play games. May 28, 2019 at 16:52

2 Answers 2

1

You might try a gnome tweak: Overview All Windows

That gives you a list in the top bar of all windows in all workspaces. You can then select from that.
It needs a mouse to activate first though.
A further refinement would be a keyboard shortcut to use xdotool to do the mouse click. It's not easy as that moves when the normal window max/min/fullscreen is showing to the right of it

Edit: additional

xdotool getmouselocation

Mine was:

x:1910 y:16 screen:0 window:0 

xdotool mousemove 1910  16 && xdotool click 1 

for multi monitors a refinement would be to focus the primary screen and execute it or find a way to get the top bar in both monitors and make the script get the coordinates of the currently focused screen. my script which works ok for me when on primary monitor

#!/bin/bash 
xdotool mousemove 1910  16 
sleep 1
xdotool click 1

managed to get the primary screen focused.#bin/bash - need to inquire which is the primary screen as I change it around. alternatively do a different shortcut key for a different setup.

Get screen id from xrandr.

xdotool mousemove 1910  16 --screen HMDI-A-0
sleep 1
xdotool click 1

and execute it with keyboard shortcut.

bash "/home/<yourplace>/<yourscriptname>.sh"

the issue I had with the showallwindows icon being not in the top right corner was the gnome tweak Unite, and I had show window buttons in top bar, which I have disabled.

Got it to select the primary display

xrandr | grep primary |   cut -d " " -f1

so the hotkeyed script it now

#!/bin/bash 
primaryscreen=$(xrandr | grep primary |   cut -d " " -f1)
echo "$screen"
xdotool mousemove 1910  16 --screen $primaryscreen
sleep 1
xdotool click 1

next step is to get those screen top left coordinates automatically

got it now only took 2 hours finds the primary screen's resolution, gets the coordinate of max x less 10, and takes 10 as the y coordinate which equates with the top left corner of the primary screen which has the top bar, and is the location of the showallwindows tweak icon.

#!/bin/bash 
primaryscreen=$(xrandr | grep primary |   cut -d " " -f1)

coords=$(xrandr --current | sed -n 's/.* connected \([0-9]*\)x\([0-9]*\)+.*/\1x\2/p' ) 
xcoords=$(echo $coords | cut -d 'x' -f1)
ycoords=$(echo $coords | cut -d 'x' -f2)


xcoords=`expr $xcoords - 10`
# not used as only needs to be 10 ycoords=`expr $ycoords - 10`

xdotool mousemove  --sync  $xcoords 10 --screen $primaryscreen 
sleep 1
xdotool click 1
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  • I think everything was fine until the "needs a mouse to activate thought". I would prefer do not have to mess with the mouse-click stuff, as you mentioned problems may arrive with different window's. Anyway, lets wait for another approach. May 30, 2019 at 16:25
  • addendum, another thing I wanted to do works (with my monitor resolution at 1920X1080), to get firefox to 'show all tabs' similary to above show all windows for me xdotool mousemove 1900 46 && xdotool click 1 worked well, and another shortcut for it.
    – pierrely
    Aug 20, 2019 at 3:40
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You can re-enable Show All Windows in All Workspaces by installing COMPIZ. I installed it on Ubuntu Mate 20.04 and since then I have been using it regularly.

sudo apt install compiz
sudo apt install compizconfig-settings-manager
sudo apt install compiz-plugins 

or

Select these packages when using the Synaptic Package Manager:

  • compiz
  • compiz-core
  • compiz-gnome
  • compiz-mate
  • compiz-plugins
  • compizconfig-settings-manager
  • Emerald
  • Emerald-themes
  • Fusion-icons
  • libcompizconfig
  • libdecoration
  • python3-compiz

To change window manager

Go to MenuMATE TweakWindow managerSelect Compiz

  • Super+w = Show all windows in all workspaces will be enabled by default.

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