How to stop Mod4-P from switching the display?

Solution 1:

Disregard my other answer, it's incorrect.

There are laptops out there that have a physical button for video output switching hardcoded to send Win+p. This is why Ubuntu now interpets Win+p as a video output switching key.

This is hardcoded in gnome-settings-daemon and can be disabled in gconf by setting

/apps/gnome_settings_daemon/plugins/xrandr/active

to false. This workaround probably has a nasty side effect of breaking your real video switch key, if you have one.

P.S. This feature is added via an Ubuntu-specific debian/45_support_new_video_key.patch, but upstream gnome-settings daemon will do the same thing in a different gnome-settings-daemon plugin (media-keys). It is therefore likely that this gconf workaround will stop working in Natty.

P.P.S. There's an open bug claiming that stealing Win+p this way is not nice for people who have sane hardware and want to use it for something else.

Solution 2:

Ubuntu 14.04 simply:

dconf write /org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/active false

At the command line :)

Solution 3:

Install compizconfig-settings-manager, run it, press Advanced Search >, enable the checkbox for searching in setting values, and do a search for <Super>p (and <Mod4>p, just in case -- both spellings appear to work).

On my machine I find that <Super>p is bound by two disabled plugins: ADD Helper and Shelf.

Solution 4:

For newer versions of Ubuntu, dconf is used (instead of gconf) for changing the gnome-settings-daemon setting: see this question.