Disabling Unity Keyboard Shortcuts Overlay


Recently I’ve been using Windows 8 as a virtual machine on top of Ubuntu 14.10.

One thing that bugs me is the Windows Logo Key, or known as Super Key in the *nix community. In Windows 8, we frequently need to press the key to go back and forth between the Desktop and the Start Screen. However, since the Windows 8 runs inside VMWare Player and the VMWare runs on top of Ubuntu, pressing the Super key will cause an annoying effect: Unity’s Keyboard Shortcut Overlay will show up above the VMWare window! Please see image below.

Unity Keyboard Shortcuts Overlay covering VMWare Player window.
Unity Keyboard Shortcuts Overlay covering VMWare Player window.

Ofcourse it can be closed. However, seeing the overlay covering VMWare everytime I press the key has became very disturbing. So it’s better to disable the feature. To do this, enter this command from terminal:

dconf write /org/compiz/profiles/unity/plugins/unityshell/shortcut-overlay false

Now the overlay won’t show up if I press the Super key from VMWare or if I hold Super key from other Ubuntu window. To turn it back on, just replace false with true:

dconf write /org/compiz/profiles/unity/plugins/unityshell/shortcut-overlay true

There’s a chance that you read someone suggesting you to use CCSM to do this task. I must warn you, using CCSM is not recommended since it may cause your system to become unstable. Happy virtualizing!


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