Gnome3 - Change window drag shortcut

Question

Gnome defaults to using Alt+LeftMouse dragging for moving windows around - I hate this feature and it breaks some apps I use. In Gnome2 you could change the modifier key in one of the settings dialogs, but I can't find the corresponding one in Gnome3, can anyone point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

The GNOME Shell window manager, Mutter, is based on Metacity (GNOME 2) and uses the same settings. They are located in GConf at /apps/metacity.

Use gconf-editor or gconftool-2 to change the /apps/metacity/general/mouse_button_modifier setting to your preferred modifier. For example, to choose the "Windows" key, I use:

gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/general/mouse_button_modifier --type string "<Super>"

In recent GNOME versions, configuration is accessed through GSettings, with Linux using the dconf backend. To change the setting through GSettings (recommended), use:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences mouse-button-modifier "'<Super>'"

To write it directly to the dconf backend, use:

dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/wm/preferences/mouse-button-modifier "'<Super>'"

You can also find it in GNOME Tweak Tool under Windows → Modifier to use for window click actions.

Changes should take effect immediately.

Answer 2

It can also be set in Tweak Tool:

Windows > Window Action Key > select Alt