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Accepted
Michael Durrant
Asked: 2012-05-30 06:13:57 +0800 CST

Quickly minimize/hide all windows, preferably with mouse - 11.10 specifc

  • 772

How can I minimize/hide all my windows quickly, same as moving mouse to lower right in Windows XP?

  • I don't want a command-line option.
  • Ideally, I want to move the mouse to trigger it, or perhaps click the mouse.
  • I can't use a trackpad/touchpad solution since I use an external mouse.
11.10

5 Answers

  1. In 11.10 the default keyboard shortcut to minimize all windows and show the desktop is Super+D, in 12.04 Ctrl+Super+D.

    Installing and running CCSM is not recommended.

    You can activate the launcher icon to show the desktop in the desktop settings from 12.04 only myunity Install myunity (in 11.10 this feature was not yet implemented in the Compiz Unity plugin)

    enter image description here

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  2. Moving mouse to edge/corner like Windows

    • To mimic the behavior you want (move to lower right triggers minimize), just install CompizConfig Settings Manager (CCSM) with sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager.

    • Start CCSM from the Dash, and type "General Options" under filter. Double-click on General Options, select the Key Bindings tab, and find the Show Desktop edge binding as shown below:

    enter image description here

    • Click on "None" to get the edge-selection window, and click the bottom-right (or whichever you want) to turn it from red to green. Click OK and close CCSM.

    enter image description here

    • Now moving to the bottom right will show the desktop/minimize; moving away and moving back to that corner will unhide the minimized windows.

    Based on Takkat's reference to this CCSM link, I will add that CCSM is an advanced tool and one wrong click/typo, especially if you are fat fingered, may render you unable to use the full Unity Gui, until you fix it from the terminal. So uninstalling it after you're done is probably a good idea; the changes will persist.

    Keyboard Shortcut for 11.10 (Super+D)

    A keyboard way to minimize all Windows (much like Win+D in Windows) is Super+D. (in 12.04, it's Ctrl+Super+D)

    Super key = Win key!

    Doing this again will restore the windows.

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  3. Best Answer

    I found an answer that does work on 11.10 !!!

    Unity Tweak!

    Doing this:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tualatrix/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-tweak

    Installs it.

    If you start the app...

    enter image description here

    ...you can see the settings:

    enter image description here

    With or without the app up, now if you move to the bottom right corner , all windows hide.
    That's the default on install.

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  4. Besides for the keyboard shortcut izx mentioned, there is also a way to add a "Show Desktop" button, https://askubuntu.com/a/68996/53455.

    They made this a little easier to do in 12.04, you can install the MyUnity utility (available in the repos), open it up, click desktop, then 'Active "Show desktop" icon. I'm not sure if MyUnity and this method will work for 11.10.

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  5. Ctrl+Alt+D is the combination on my Ubuntu 10.04 LTS — to hide all windows on the desktop.

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