up vote 25 down vote favorite
17

In Ubuntu 14.04, when you hold Alt and click a window, you can drag it around. As I understand, you used to be able to disable it through gconf, but Unity doesn't read settings from here any more (hence not being able to change where the window buttons are any more).

There's no setting for this by default, and I can't find anything in Unity Tweak Tool either. Is there anyway to disable Alt+click window movement in 14.04?

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1  
Close voters! This post has answers that are superior to the called duplicate. Merge candidate? maybe. Close? never – Elder Geek Dec 8 '16 at 20:33
up vote 25 down vote accepted

In 14.04 (or 14.10, 15.04, 15.10, 16.04), to set the default key / value:

dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/wm/preferences/mouse-button-modifier  '"<Alt>"'

You can give it a (limited number of) other value(s), but not set it to none, like you could in the past. Doing that will give you some trouble getting control over your mouse back, as I found out...

The practical value of this information is quite limited, since not many alternative keys are accepted. I found only Shift and Super to be working, which I doubt will give you the solution you'd like to have.

Of course you can use dconf-editor as well:

org>gnome>desktop>wm>preferences

enter image description here

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10  
kcpr's solution lets you set it to something like <Shift><Control><Alt><Super>Button20 pretty easily. Will be hard to accidentally trigger that. – mpen Apr 8 '15 at 16:18
    
FYI, this still works in 16.04. – John P Bloch Jan 19 '17 at 23:34
    
@JohnPBloch ah, great, good to hear. Thanks for mentioning. – Jacob Vlijm Jan 19 '17 at 23:35
up vote 10 down vote

You can also do this through Compiz Settings Manager.
Just install it with sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager.
The addon is called 'Move' and is located in section called 'Window Management' I believe. You can go straight to its settings with ccsm -p move.

I really recommend this application. It gives access to massive amount of system customization options.

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Indeed, super easy this way. – Vadorequest Mar 10 '16 at 14:34
up vote 4 down vote

You can us CompizConfig Settings Manager (CCSM). This tool is essential if you want to tweak Linux for better efficiency, because it makes it easy to configure the desktop environment to be much more efficient then out-of-the-box Ubuntu. I used to use things like dconf-editor, and Ubuntu Tweak, but for tweaking anything related to desktop behavior, I have found CCSM to be much more powerful and easy to use.

  1. Install CompizConfig Settings Manager by typing this in a terminal:

    sudo apt install compizconfig-settings-manager

  2. Open CCSM (CompizConfig Settings Manager), go to the Window Management section, and find the Move Windows icon.

  3. Make sure Move Window is enabled, and then Click it's button.

enter image description here

  1. Click the button to the right of the Initiate Move Window with the mouse icon next to it.

enter image description here

  1. In the Edit Initiate Window Move window, and then make sure to un-check the Enabled check-box. That will disable it. You can also easily set the Window Move to a different mouse/keyboard/screen-edge combination, if you would like, although binding it to a screen edge wouldn't work. This is where this tool, CCSM, outdoes dconf-editor and Ubuntu Tweak.

enter image description here

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Disabling the shortcut didn't work for me in Ubuntu 16.04, instead I had to change the default shortcut. – Jaime Hablutzel Dec 5 '17 at 22:23
up vote 2 down vote

You can also use GNOME Tweak Tool (gnome-tweak-tool).

In 'Windows' section, change the 'Window Action Key' setting.

This tool is obviously for the GNOME Shell tweaking, but some properties are respected by Unity as well.

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up vote 2 down vote

Today I've learned that pressing key

Super

together with

Alt + Click

circumvents (deactivates) the dragging behavior. Solved my issues at least, as the application (Inkscape) I wanted to use Alt+Click with, seems to simply ignore the additional key (Super) been pressed.

sf. https://askubuntu.com/a/445254/618422

#edit

By the way, it's also documented officially at:

https://inkscape.org/en/doc/tutorials/basic/tutorial-basic.en.html#Selecting_under_and_dragging_selected

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