How to change GNOME task switcher

Solution 1:

In Gnome Shell, the Window switcher switches between individual windows, whereas the Application switcher, default in upstream Gnome Shell and in some Ubuntu versions, switches between applications.

You can disconnect the application switcher from the default keybindings with following configuration commands in the terminal:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-applications "[]"
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-applications-backward "[]"

You can then enable the window switcher instead:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-windows "['<Alt>Tab', '<Super>Tab']"
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-windows-backward  "['<Alt><Shift>Tab', '<Super><Shift>Tab']"

As a bonus tip, you could, if you wish, bind the Window switcher to e.g. '<Alt>Tab' and '<Alt><Shift>Tab' and the Application switcher to e.g. 'Tab' and 'Tab' by adapting the above commands accordingly.

As an additional bonus tip, you can also control whether the application and/or window switcher should display applications/windows on all workspaces (default for Application switcher), or on current workspace only (default for Window switcher).

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.window-switcher current-workspace-only true
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.app-switcher current-workspace-only false

To undo your changes and reset to default, you can reset any of these keys as for example in:

gsettings reset org.gnome.shell.window-switcher current-workspace-only

i.e., in any of the above commands, change set to reset and leave the value of the setting (last argument) out.

So you can customize this quite to your liking.