If you are a power user heavily reliant on keyboard shortcuts, you likely use Alt+Tab constantly to quickly switch between open applications. On the GNOME desktop environment (the default for Ubuntu Linux), the Alt+Tab switcher automatically groups multiple windows of the same application together. If you have four separate Firefox windows open, Alt+Tab will only show one Firefox icon. To select a specific window, you must pause, wait for a dropdown arrow to appear, and press the Alt+` (grave) key to cycle through the grouped windows.
For users coming from Windows or older Linux desktop environments, this grouping behavior feels incredibly slow and cumbersome. It adds unnecessary keystrokes to your workflow and makes it difficult to rapidly snap back and forth between two specific browser windows.
You can easily reconfigure Ubuntu to completely ungroup all windows, forcing every single open window to display as its own distinct tile in the Alt+Tab menu.
How to Ungroup Windows in the Alt-Tab Switcher
You simply need to reassign the keyboard shortcut in the Ubuntu Settings app.
- Open the Settings app in Ubuntu.
- In the left-hand navigation sidebar, scroll down and click on Keyboard.
- Look under the “Keyboard Shortcuts” section and click on View and Customize Shortcuts.
- A new window will appear. Click on the Navigation category.
- Locate the entry labeled Switch applications (this is currently mapped to Alt+Tab). Click on it, and when prompted, press the
Backspacekey to clear the shortcut, then click Set. - Now, scroll down slightly and locate the entry labeled Switch windows.
- Click on “Switch windows”, hold down the Alt key, and press Tab (this maps Alt+Tab to the new behavior).
- Click the Set button to confirm.
You have successfully replaced the app-centric switcher with a window-centric switcher. Now, when you press Alt+Tab, every single window on your desktop (regardless of the parent application) will appear as an independent, immediately selectable tile.