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Open Whisker menu with Windows key

EDIT: There's bug in Xfce (or maybe a feature) that makes it impossible to use shortcuts with only one modifier key, in this case the Windows key. Basically, if you have a keyboard shortcut that uses the Windows/Super key, e.g Super + Up and then you make Super alone open the Whisker menu (or something else), Super + Up shortcut stops working! To fix this, check the bottom of the article.

If you come from Windows, you are very likely used to pressing the Windows button and typing a name of an application to launch it. You can achieve the same with Xfce's Whisker menu. Unfortunately it isn't called with the Windows (Super on non-Windows OSs) key by default. You can change it of course, it's Linux!

1. Go to Settings Manager --> Keyboard --> Application Shortcuts

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2. Click the Add button and point it to xfce4-popup-whiskermenu

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3. Click OK and press your desired key combination (only the Super key in my case).

Done! Pressing the Super/Windows key will now bring up Whisker menu and you can start typing immediately to launch an app you want.


As mentioned at the beginning of this article, there's a problem with using only one modifier key alone as a shortcut, which makes (most) other shortcuts using this modifier key stop working. You will have to download this utility to fix it: https://github.com/hanschen/ksuperkey

Unfortunately I haven't made this working yet and decided dropping this shortcut for now.