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I've just started using Linux Mint 15 with Cinnamon 1.8.8 at work and when I press Alt+F1 the display zoom out and displays the workspace switcher.

How can I disable this shortcut? I removed the keyboard shortcuts in System settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts that seemed relevant but with no effect. Then I removed all of them, but of course still no effect.

Update The accepted answer worked for Mint 15. After upgrading to Mint 16 I also had to use dconf-editor as described by maosmurf below.

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  • Maybe you need to log out and in again to change it effectively.
    – user13742
    Nov 7, 2013 at 9:50
  • Tried to log out and back in. The Alt-F1 keybinding is still there. Nov 7, 2013 at 10:00
  • You can possibly remove the keybinding by first running xev, then pressing Alt+F1, and then look at section keycode in the output. Then run the command: xmodmap -e "keycode # = """, where # is the keycode.
    – user37607
    Nov 7, 2013 at 12:06

2 Answers 2

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Under Linux Mint 16 "Petra" Cinnamon, I had a similar problem. Removing the Keyboard shortcuts under gnome-control-center and cinnamon-control-center had no effect. Solution that worked for me:

  • run dconf-editor
  • navigate to org.cinnamon.muffin.keybindings
  • for panel-main-menu, replace ['<Alt>F1'] with []
  • logout & login

(props to Nick Fortescue @ Superuser)

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  • After upgrading to Mint 16, I had to do this too. Thanks. Dec 6, 2013 at 7:30
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    After upgrading to Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca, I had to remove ALT-F1 again. This time under System Settings / Keyboard / Keyboard Shortcuts / General / Toggle Expo (double click into "ALT-F1" and hit backspace) Now my IDE is happy again :)
    – maosmurf
    Feb 3, 2015 at 14:10
  • Thanks so much. The Find function in dconf-editor is not capable of finding F1 in arrays o.O An alternative to switch off the shortcut is this shell command: gsettings set org.cinnamon.desktop.keybindings.wm switch-to-workspace-up '["<Ctrl><Alt>Up"]' Dec 4, 2015 at 11:18
  • Thanks that worked. Had to sudo apt-get install dconf-editor first. Feb 19, 2016 at 14:02
  • "double click into ... and hit backspace" wow, that is not even close to intuitive! Should be able to just select the entry and hit delete/backspace.
    – Josh M.
    Jun 14, 2018 at 14:51
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On my system (Cinnamon 1.8.8 on Linux Mint Debian Edition) I can disable it in the Gnome control center. Open a terminal and run gnome-control-center:

enter image description here

Go into keyboard => Shortcuts and select the System section on the left:

enter image description here

Now, change the shortcut for "Show the activities overview" click on it and then press Backspace to disable it.


It may be possible to do the same on Linux Mint 15 by going into cinnamon-control-center but that is not available on the Debian edition so I can't check.

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  • I installed gnome-control-center with apt-get and it worked fine. Thanks! Strange that the Cinnamon settings doesn't show the "Show the activities overview" setting. Nov 13, 2013 at 14:45

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