Disable automatic activation of Gnome Shell activities on mouse over

For 11.10

The location of this was changed for 11.04, for 11.04 look below. You can do this with a quick edit of the file /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/layout.js If you find the code:

this._corner = new Clutter.Rectangle({ name: 'hot-corner',
                                       width: 1,
                                       height: 1,
                                       opacity: 0,
                                       reactive: true });

Change reactive: true to reactive: false and it will disable the hot corner but still allow to activate the overview screen by clicking the Activities button or by pressing the Super (Windows) key.

I'm going to look into making an extension to modify this behaviour instead of direct modification of the panel.js file as it will be overwritten with updates.

For 11.04

Same as above but edit the file /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/panel.js:

this._corner = new Clutter.Rectangle({ width: 1,
                                       height: 1,
                                       opacity: 0,
                                       reactive: true });

The Activities configurator extension has an option to disable the "Activities" hotspot. It is called "Disable Hot Corner". Also, by default, the text is replaced by an icon -- this saves space.

Works for Ubuntu 12.10.

In 11.10 and later versions, you can disable the hot corner by installing the "No Topleft Hot Corner" extension from the official Gnome-shell extensions site.

Download extension.js and metadata.json from https://github.com/hermanus/gnome-shell-extensions/tree/master/Gnome-shell-activities-hotspot-disabler and put them in ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]/. The name of the directory is important -- you can change it if you change the uuid in metadata.json too.

This will install an extension that overrides the Panel.HotCorner.prototype._onCornerEntered function, so the activities screen is only shown when you click on 'Activities'. To activate it, visit https://extensions.gnome.org/local/ .

Currently, this extension works with Gnome version 3.6, that's the one shipped with Ubuntu 12.10. If you browse through the history at Github, you will find versions that work with older Gnome releases (up to 3.0. = Ubuntu 11.04.)

Download and open gnome-tweaks, go to the "Top Bar" tab and disable the "Activities Overview Hot Corner" setting: