lxqt-globalkeys

Overview

This repository is providing tools to set global keyboard shortcuts in LXQt sessions, that is shortcuts which apply to the LXQt session as a whole and are not limited to distinct applications.

The core components are two binaries lxqt-globalkeysd and lxqt-config-globalkeyshortcuts.
lxqt-globalkeysd is running in a daemon-like manner as so-called LXQt Module and doing the actual work. GUI lxqt-config-globalkeyshortcuts is used to customize the shortcut settings.

Installation

Compiling source code

The only runtime dependencies is liblxqt.
Additional build dependencies are CMake and optionally Git to pull latest VCS checkouts. The localization files were outsourced to repository lxqt-l10n so the corresponding dependencies are needed, too. Please refer to this repository's README.md for further information.

Code configuration is handled by CMake. CMake variable CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX has to be set to /usr on most operating systems, depending on the way library paths are dealt with on 64bit systems variables like CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR may have to be set as well.

To build run make, to install make install which accepts variable DESTDIR as usual.

Binary packages

Official binary packages are provided by all major Linux distributions like Arch Linux, Debian (as of Debian stretch only), Fedora and openSUSE. Just use your package manager to search for string lxqt-globalkeys.

Configuration, Usage

Caveat lxqt-globalkeys vs. window managers

Window managers can assign shortcuts as well and their scope may overlap with the one of lxqt-globalkeys in LXQt sessions.
This was e. g. affecting elderly configuration files rc.xml of Openbox which were assigning Ctrl+Alt+D to toggling the display of the desktop which lxqt-globalkeys tries to do as well. This resulted in a warning message "Global shortcut C+A+d+ cannot be registered", see https://github.com/lxde/lxqt/issues/1032.
As depicted in this issue lxqt-notificationd will show a warning when conflicts like this come up and users can thus decide whether they want to have the shortcut in question handled by the respective window manager or lxqt-globalkeys.

lxqt-globalkeys

Daemon-like lxqt-globalkeysd can be adjusted from section "Basic Settings" in configuration dialogue LXQt Session Settings of lxqt-session.

Configuration dialogue "Global Actions Manager" (binary lxqt-config-globalkeyshortcuts) which is used to customize shortcuts can be opened from the panel's main menu - Preferences - LXQt Settings - Shortcut Keys and is provided by the Configuration Center of lxqt-config as well.