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.
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 + Space | Open the window operations menu |
Esc | Dismiss/cancel dialog |
Alt + Tab | Switch to next window |
Shift + Alt + Tab | Switch to previous window |
Alt + F4 | Close window |
Alt + F7 | Move window |
Alt + F8 | Resize window |
Alt + F9 | Hide window |
Alt + F10 | Maximize window |
Alt + Shift + Page Down | Raise/lower window |
Alt + F11 | Toggle fullscreen |
Alt + F12 | Toggle above |
Ctrl + Alt + D | Show 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 + Space | Open the window operations menu |
Esc | Dismiss/cancel dialog |
Alt + Tab | Switch to next window |
Shift + Alt + Tab | Switch to previous window |
Ctrl + W | Close window |
Super + Shift + up- down/left-right | Move window |
Super + R | Resize window |
Super + H | Hide window |
Super + Up | Maximize window |
Super + Down | Raise/lower window |
Super + F | Toggle fullscreen |
Super + A | Toggle above |
Super + D | Show desktop |
And especially:
Super + Enter | Run Console |
Power Off | Ctrl + 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