I want a keyboard shortcut that is equivalent to pressing the dotted "Show Applications" button on the Ubuntu dock. The closest thing in Settings > Devices > Keyboard is Show all applications (Super+A), but this shows not only all applications, but all activities as well (maybe a bug?). For example, here is a sequence of actions:
- I press Super+A to get up the applications dash.
- The applications dash pops up as expected.
- Now I want to close the applications dash, I hit Super+A OR Escape.
- It goes away, but now the activities dash is there instead of the desktop or whatever I had before Step 1).
3 Answers
What you're describing is a standard behaviour.
- Pressing Super brings up the "Activities" overview (same as clicking "Activities" in the top-left). Pressing Super again brings you back to the desktop.
- Pressing Super+A brings up the applications list (same as clicking "Show Applications" icon in the Ubuntu dock).
But pressing Super+A again or pressing Escape won't take you back to the desktop, it takes you to the Activities overview instead (standard behaviour from GNOME shell). Press only Super when you have the applications list open to get back to your desktop.
I actually created a lightweight deb installer to do this, check out my repo here
The installation instructions are in the github README. The program is a simple shell script that invokes the keyboard shortcut for showing applications (Super+A)
It's not a direct keyboard shortcut like you were asking, but it's pretty close.
use dash to panel extension. It has the the setting to work with escape
I didn't actually found the setting. But escape started working once I installed it. It also has {click empty space to close overview} and lot more. It may help you
