Cannot use Ctrl-Tab as keyboard shortcut in gnome-terminal

[Mikael Ståldal]

Binary package hint: gnome-terminal

It is not possible to use Ctrl-Tab as keyboard shortcut in gnome-terminal.

I would like to use it to switch tabs.

[Stoanhart (stoanhart)]

I agree. It seems that the tab key can not be used, regardless of what the combo is. I would like consitent tab management between firefox and gnome-terminal.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for your report, that's known upstream: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=123994

comment from upstream:

"There are a couple of keys which are not candidates to be keyboard
accelerators, independently of the modifiers. Tab is one of those
keys, as it (with various combinations of modifiers) are reserved by
gtk for its own use and the window manager.

Note that validity is decided by calling gtk_accelerator_valid, but
the list of valid accelerator keys seems to be only in the source
(which you can find at
http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/gtk+/gtk/gtkaccelgroup.c#790, in case
you feel like it)
"

[Mikael Ståldal (mikaelstaldal)]

I posted this comment upstream:

"I think that is a serious limitiation to not be able to use Ctrl-Tab as a
keyboard shortcut in Gnome applications.

Elsewhere, it is a convention to use Ctrl-Tab to switch between tabs/subwindows
within an application. You use this in e.g. Mozilla Firefox, and I successfully
configured Eclipse for this behaviour.

Since you use Alt-Tab to switch between applications, it's quite convenient to
be able to use Ctrl-Tab to swtich tab/subwindow within an application."

[Keith Hughitt (keith-hughitt)]

I also think it would be great to be able to configure gnome-terminal to use (shift) Control + Tab.

[LeviRosol (levi-rosol)]

Agreed that this is a useful, and more and more commonly used keyboard shortcut.

[Kyle Lin (luckysolar)]

Agreed. I think it is important to me for using Ctrl +Tab to swith tabs when I write code by vim. Expect we can configure gnome-terminal to use this feature.

[Paolo Milani (j-s-sebastian)]

Agreed. I think most users learned about tabs from the firefox browser, so other applications should follow the conventions set by firefox: (shift) ctrl+tab to switch, ctrl-N for a new tab, ctrl-f4 to close a tab

[Felipe Amado (amadinho10)]

I agree. And I think all applications should use the same keyboard shortcuts for tabs management (Ctrl + T, Ctrl + W, Ctrl + Tab).

[rusik3 (rusik3)]

It is a really not usefull without ctr + tab and ctr+shift_tab

[duncan mcnae (duncanmcnae)]

Very much needed to get unity between different programs and their tab behaviour. It is this way in nautilus....

[Loren Dias (lorendias)]

I configure all my keyboard bindings to use Firefox style hotkeys,

Most of us grew up on Firefox first and Linux second, so it makes sense to cater to our existing workflow.

This problem is still fundamental, I'm trying to figure out if its possible to make the necessary edits here, or if the system prohibits it:
~/.config/nautilus/accels

[Jon (dotnetcarpenter)]

Right, then it is past time to switch terminal.

[Simon Law (sfllaw)]

As a hack, you can still specify "<Primary>Tab" and "<Primary><Shift>Tab" as keybindings, directly using dconf-editor or gsettings.

For instance, gnome-terminal:

$ gsettings set \
  org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Keybindings:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/keybindings/ \
  next-tab '<Primary>Tab'
$ gsettings set \
  org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Keybindings:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/keybindings/ \
  prev-tab '<Primary><Shift>Tab'

[Joao Loureiro (joaofl)]

This issue was reported back in 2007. Still no plans to get that fixed?

It is certainly not critical, but definitely makes usage more intuitive and user happier.

[Benjamin Melançon (v-ben-h)]

The solution in comment 13 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bug/162000/comments/13 and is a godsend and is justifiably popular on Ask Ubuntu stackexchange: https://askubuntu.com/a/875482/95056

Most people, i am sure, just suffer without the most sensible shortcuts for switching tabs. Would be excellent to add this to Gnome or work around it proactively.

[Yarma22 (yarma22)]

Considering that the default shortcut to switch between tabs in some major Gnome apps, such as Files and Text Editor, is actually Ctrl-Tab/Ctrl-Shit-Tab (at least with recent versions), doesn't that make the upstream limitation obsolete and could this behavior be ported to Terminal?