Laptop-friendly alternatives to Unity window-placement shortcuts

Unity (I'm using Ubuntu Trusty if it matters) has these very handy shortcuts where you can press ctrl+alt+numpad to place a window in one of 8 predetermined positions. For instance, ctrl+alt+7 will place the window in the top left quarter of the screen, resizing it appropriately. ctrl+alt+8 will place the window in the top half of the screen, maximizing horizontally; similarly, ctrl-alt-4 will place it in the left half, maximizing vertically.

This makes it very easy to "tile" windows in a non-overlapping fashion and is a huge time-saver for arranging windows.

Sadly, these shortcuts are almost unusable on compact laptops (i.e. without a numpad, so basically everything under 15" screen size), as they lack a dedicated numpad. Some have an "overlaid" numpad, accessible by some arcane key combination, which makes things very cumbersome as the sequence becomes "enable keypad - place window - disable keypad". Some others simply lack numpad functionality.

Is there a way or alternative shortcut for Unity to use on these systems? I'm thinking something using the Super key which is already used extensively by Unity, but I couldn't find such feature.


  1. Install Compiz Config Setting Manager (ccsm):

    sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager
    
  2. Look for GridBinding tab

  3. Set whatever shortcuts you like. I would suggest Ctrl+Alt+qwe,asd,zxd which seems good for a Qwerty keyboard.

    The only used one I can see is d to show desktop, but you can change it to to some thing else from Ubuntu Unity PluginGeneral tab → Show desktop.