Minty shortcuts

I got frustrated hunting and removing shortcuts from GNOME / Cinnamon when working with an IDE.

The shortcuts CLI can export and import keyboard shortcut settings as JSON (via gsettings), clean WM keybindings so only Super-based shortcuts and basic window keys (Alt+Tab, Alt+F4, Alt+Space) remain, or clean-cinnamon-super to turn off the Cinnamon Grouped Window List applet’s Super+number hotkeys (via dconf and spice JSON under ~/.config/cinnamon).

Requires Python 3.7+. Run from the project directory (or install the shortcuts package on PYTHONPATH).

Usage

python3 -m shortcuts clean              # prune WM shortcuts (default schemas)
python3 -m shortcuts clean --schemas org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings

python3 -m shortcuts export -o backup.json
python3 -m shortcuts export --extra-schema org.gnome.Some.Schema

python3 -m shortcuts import backup.json
python3 -m shortcuts import backup.json --dry-run
python3 -m shortcuts import backup.json --backup           # export current settings first
python3 -m shortcuts import backup.json --backup /path/to/snapshot.json
python3 -m shortcuts import backup.json --strict           # fail on first error

python3 -m shortcuts clean-cinnamon-super                  # disable GWL Super+number from applet "grouped window list"
python3 -m shortcuts clean-cinnamon-super --dry-run        # show what would change

JSON format

Exports are a single object with format_version, optional meta, and an entries array. Each entry is { "schema", "key", "value" } where value is the exact string returned by gsettings get (lossless round-trip).

Example:

{
  "format_version": 1,
  "meta": {
    "generator": "shortcuts",
    "hostname": "mybox",
    "timestamp": "2026-04-10T12:00:00+00:00"
  },
  "entries": [
    {
      "schema": "org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings",
      "key": "switch-to-workspace-1",
      "value": "@as ['<Super>Home']"
    }
  ]
}

Cinnamon custom shortcuts (the slots listed in custom-list) store binding, command, and name under relocatable schemas, for example org.cinnamon.desktop.keybindings.custom-keybinding:/org/cinnamon/desktop/keybindings/custom-keybindings/custom1/. Export includes those entries so commands such as shell scripts appear in the JSON. GNOME uses the same idea under org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys (custom-keybindings plus …custom-keybinding:… paths).

Unknown or missing schemas are skipped with a warning so the same file can be used across machines.