Xfce useful keyboard shortcuts

Xfce, the uber-cool lightweight desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems, is known to be fast and low on system resources, while still being visually appealing and user friendly. It is also a super productive desktop, because you can fit it on your needs, has no bloat, and fully customizable.

One of the most interesting aspects of Xfce is that it has only basic shortcuts by default compared to GNOME or tiling VM, and also some of the shortcuts are clearly old-school or too windows-like. So, let’s see what can we do with this Xfce useful keyboard shortcuts.

A simple menu entry for Calibre in Xfce
A simple Xfce desktop environment

The official Xfce keyboard shortcuts list

We didn’t find it, and we think Xfce does not provide an official and comprehensive keyboard shortcuts list. But we are lucky, because Xfce stores its keyboard shortcuts in a single file:

/etc/xdg/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml

Also, you can find a user config file based on distros (the same for Fedora, openSUSE and Ubuntu at the time of writing) at:

~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml

Usually, the default keyboard shortcuts for Xfce are:

Alt + SpaceOpen the window operations menu
EscDismiss/cancel dialog
Alt + TabSwitch to next window
Shift + Alt + TabSwitch to previous window
Alt + F4Close window
Alt + F7Move window
Alt + F8Resize window
Alt + F9Hide window
Alt + F10Maximize window
Alt + Shift + Page DownRaise/lower window
Alt + F11Toggle fullscreen
Alt + F12Toggle above
Ctrl + Alt + DShow desktop

So – easily – you can edit the shortcuts keyboard file and populate it with the default GNOME shortcuts or with the ones you like or prefer.

As an example, something like this:

Alt + SpaceOpen the window operations menu
EscDismiss/cancel dialog
Alt + TabSwitch to next window
Shift + Alt + TabSwitch to previous window
Ctrl + WClose window
Super + Shift + up-
down/left-right
Move window
Super + RResize window
Super + HHide window
Super + UpMaximize window
Super + DownRaise/lower window
Super + FToggle fullscreen
Super + AToggle above
Super + DShow desktop


And especially:

Super + EnterRun Console
Power OffCtrl + Alt + DEL

The possible combinations are practically infinite,

so the advice is to test the most convenient ones

for your personal workflow and then modify the

purpose accordingly by applying all the necessary

changes to get your super uber Xfce useful

keyboard shortcuts.

Also, on the A shortcuts editor for Xfce (and a

couple of other things) page, you can find the

freshly released Xfce shortcuts editor to make

your work really really simple. Enjoy it.

We hope this article was useful to you, let us

know in the comments. Tschüss!

RE Xfce useful keyboard shortcuts, here.

IMAGE from OpenBSD-current with XFCE By dcoppa