What are the different methods to switch between windows and workspaces?

Question

What are the different possibilities (both keyboard and mouse) to switch:

• between windows of the same application on the same workspace,
• between windows of all applications on the same workspace,
• between the two most recently used workspaces?

Answer 1

Windows

You can switch between windows several ways:

• Click on the window you want to switch to
• Click on the app's icon in the dock
• Hover over the app's icon in the dock and scroll up and down
• Press Alt + Tab
• To see an overview of your open app windows, press ⌘ + W.
• In elementaryOS 7.1 (Horus) and later, switch windows of the open application with Alt + ~.

You can customize these shortcuts through System Settings → Keyboard → Shortcuts → Windows.

Hot Corners

You can also configure "hot corners" (shortcuts activated by placing your cursor in the corner of the display) to activate multi-tasking functions like the window overview, workspace overview, and more.

You can customize hot corners through System Settings → Desktop → Hot Corners.

Workspaces

• To see an overview of your workspaces, press ⌘ + S, or ⌘ + ⬇
• To quickly move left or right through your workspaces, press ⌘ + ← or ⌘ + →
• To cycle through your workspaces, press ⌘ + Tab
• You can jump straight to a specific workspace by pressing ⌘ + 1 through ⌘ + 9. You can always jump to a new workspace with ⌘ + 0.
• You can also drag app windows between workspaces by dragging their icons in the workspace overview. To see an overview of app windows across all workspaces, press ⌘ + A.

You can customize these shortcuts through System Settings → Keyboard → Shortcuts → Workspaces.

Note:

⌘ refers to the "super" key. It is also known as the "Windows" key on most PCs or the "Command" key on Macs.

This information is taken from the "Learning The Basics" guide on elementary.io

Answer 2

For anyone who landed here only interested in switching between windows of the same application, I wrote a python script to achieve this. Gist available here: https://gist.github.com/tysonholub/c737d562614aa0d83add66dbec378723

Please see comments in the code for usage.

Note: This script also allows overriding the native switch-windows behavior through a custom key binding as I've found going forward/backward (Alt+Tab/Alt+Shift+Tab) to be counter-intuitive and unlike most operating systems.

Answer 3

Concerning "switch between windows of the same application on the same workspace". All the answers say in effect "There is no such keyboard shortcut".

But maybe something changed. I found this in ubuntu documentation:

Link: https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/shell-keyboard-shortcuts.html.en

Answer 4

As a complement to the main answer in order to address the first point of the question (switch between windows of the same application on the same workspace) which was also asked as separate questions (here, here, here) that tend to be duplicate without getting a clear answer:

There is no such keyboard shortcut, but it might not be needed. If the multiple windows of the same application are on the same workspace, the goal is achieved with the shortcut for switching windows of the same workspace (Alt-Tab) if only that (multi-window) application is using the workspace.

The general idea is to open the multi-window application (and only that) in its own workspace and then switch windows there with Alt-Tab.

If you need more than one multi-window application, use separate workspaces for each app, and switch between apps by switching workspaces (Super--Tab).

To manage the different windows & workspaces, go to the Workspace Switcher (Super-S, Super-DownArrow, keys can be customized) and there you can add new workspace and drag&drop windows between workspaces.

Note also that any window that is made fullscreen with Super-F gets a new workspace for itself.

Answer 5

I found a partial solution to your first request. Like me, you wanted a method or a keyboard shortcut to switch:

between windows of the same application on the same workspace

If you're using a trackpad - hover over the application icon in your Dock, then swipe up or down with 2 fingers. It'll cycle the windows of that application. If you're using a mouse, hover over the icon and use the scroll wheel to cycle through windows.

Unfortunately, this applies for all windows in all work spaces, but for me this is somewhat workable until a keyboard shortcut is found/created...