Fix Ctrl-Shift-Alt-Down Not Working in IDEs (Override GNOME Shortcuts on Linux)

Cyrus Kao12 Jan 2022

Last modified on 24 Apr 2023 @ 05:22:06.

In most IDEs (Integrated Development Environment), like Visual Studio Code, Sublime Text and Atom has default keyboard shortcuts to copy line down/up with Ctrl-Shift-Alt-Down and Ctrl-Shift-Alt-Up.

On Linux distros (e.g. Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, Arch Linux) using GNOME as DE will encounter an issue where GNOME's key bindings conflict with IDEs'. So, when pressing Ctrl-Shift-Alt-Down on your text editor it simply doesn't work. To fix this, we'll cover how to edit gsettings in both CLI and GUI.

Fix with CLI (Command-Line Interface)

Use gsettings list-recursively to find commands bind to <Control><Shift><Alt>Down and <Control><Shift><Alt>Up:

$ gsettings list-recursively org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings | grep '<Control><Shift><Alt>Down\|<Control><Shift><Alt>Up'

org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings move-to-workspace-down ['<Control><Shift><Alt>Down']
org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings move-to-workspace-up ['<Control><Shift><Alt>Up']
Output

Use gsettings set to set key bindings to an empty array []:

$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings move-to-workspace-down []
$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings move-to-workspace-up []

Fix with GUI (Graphical User Interface)

The process is pretty much the same, but done in dconf editor.

Install `dconf`

dconf is a GUI tool that edits gsettings, to install:

Debian/Ubuntu
```
$ sudo apt-get install dconf-editor
```
Arch Linux/Manjaro
```
$ yay -S dconf
```
Don't know how to install packages on Arch based Linux? A full guide on Two Ways to Install Packages from AUR on Arch Linux/Manjaro.
Fedora/CentOS 8+
```
$ sudo dnf install dconf-editor
```
CentOS
```
$ sudo yum install dconf-editor
```

Release Key Bindings

Open dconf then navigate to /org/gnome/desktop/wm/keybindings/, which is where key bindings are set:

Find commands that bind to <Control><Shift><Alt>Down and <Control><Shift><Alt>Up, usually move-to-workspace-down and move-to-workspace-up :

Unchecked Use default value and set the value to an empty array [] then press apply:

Setting value — Set value to an empty array

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