How to bind Ctrl-Alt-w as a custom keyboard shortcut in Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon


Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon wouldn’t let me bind Ctrl-Alt-w as a custom keyboard shortcut. It kept opening up the search in the settings window.

Here’s how I got around it.

Open up the Keyboard option from Mint’s Settings.

Add a new custom shortcut, as you would normally, and assign it the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Alt-y (instead of w). Close the window.

Install bless from apt (it’s a hex editor):

sudo apt-get install bless

Head over to the terminal, and type:

cd ~/.config/dconf
cp user user.backup
bless user

This’ll open up Cinnamon’s (binary) config file in the hex editor. Hit Ctrl-f to do a search, and search for <Alt>y. Change the dropdown which reads Hexadecimal to Text (important!) and hit Find Next. Like so:

bless

Click on the “y” and change it to a “w”.

Save (Ctrl-s), logout and log back in.

That should do it.