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I've just switched to GNOME from Unity and upgraded it to 3.12 on Ubuntu 14.04 . When I Alt+Tab to a different window, it brings all windows of an application to the front with the one I selected on top rather than just the one window I selected.

Since I have dozens of editor windows and dozens of browser windows, there's a ten-second delay from when I select a window to when it actually pops up.

This behaviour also covers-up the other windows. It makes it tough to get the right windows side-by-side.

Does anyone know how to disable this?

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  • Just imagine a bunch of Chrome windows covering up all of the other windows.
    – Dustin Oprea
    Jan 4, 2018 at 7:12
  • Have you considered using the Workspace Switcher to split the open tasks across workspaces to ease the load?
    – graham
    Jan 4, 2018 at 7:55
  • I'm not sure whether it's a Unity vs Gnome thing, or a Gnome vs earlier-Gnome thing. When I was in Unity, ALT+TAB would only bring one window of one application forward. In Gnome 3.12, ALT+TAB brings all windows of an application forward (with the particular window you chose on top).
    – Dustin Oprea
    Jan 4, 2018 at 17:19
  • There were some unexpected behavioral issues. See my answer.
    – Dustin Oprea
    Jan 4, 2018 at 18:18

2 Answers 2

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When doing ALT+TAB, you have the list of applications at the top and the list of the windows of each application underneath. When you just browse to a particular application and let go, it will bring all windows to the front. If you select the application and then use ALT+ to select a particular window, then only that window will be brought to the front.

Since you usually have some configuration issues when initially switching to Gnome from Unity (I usually have to install gnome-tweak-tool and then switch from the Unity-specific theme, enable the minimize/maximize buttons, etc..), I don't think I was getting the list of windows initially. I think they'd have popped up if I lingered on an application for a second (Unity behavior, at least), but I usually try to avoid that; Unity's behavior is to just switch to the last window of an application when you ALT+TAB to an application but not to a specific window.

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I use Alt+Tab to cycle to the correct application and then Alt+' (usually the key with the tilde) to get the window I want. When you pick a specific window it will not bring up the rest of the application's windows.

I can't remember the behavior of 14.04 but this works in 16.04 to 18.04 for sure.

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