The Cinnamon desktop environment has a number of built-in shortcuts for manipulating the system's resolution, switching workspaces, and launching applications. Mastery of these shortcuts will greatly reduce the amount of time spent clicking around menus and potentially boost your productivity.

NOTE: We will not cover all of the available shortcuts. You can look at the Keyboard menu discussed below in order to see them all. This article will cover some of the ones you are most likely to use.

NOTE on Key Terminology:

• If your keyboard came from a Mac, the Alt key might be labeled Option instead.
• If your keyboard came from a Mac, you likely have a Command key. If you have a Windows-based keyboard, you likely have a Windows key. These keys are referred to in the Linux world as the Super key (or Meta key in emacs and a few other contexts)
• The ` key is sometimes called the grave or backtick. It is usually found above the Tab key, and shares its key with the tilde (~).

We will be discussing the shortcuts as they exist on a freshly-installed instance of Korora Cinnamon. However, if you would like to change the default shortcuts to better suit your keyboard or workflow, you are free to do by opening the Keyboard settings application, which can be reached by navigating through the following menu path: Menu -> Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts or Menu -> Preferences -> System Settings -> Hardware -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts

If Cinnamon becomes unresponsive or you need to otherwise access a text-only console terminal outside of the window manager, enter the following command:

Ctrl + Alt + F2

You can switch back to the GUI by hitting:

Ctrl + Alt + F1

If Cinnamon has become buggy or unusable, you can try restarting it via the following:

Ctrl + Alt + Escape

Ctrl + Alt + End

Ctrl + Alt + L

NOTE: On GNOME and some other desktop environment's (including Windows), locking the screen is usually Super + L, however in Cinnamon this launches the Cinnamon debugger, Melange.

Ctrl + Alt + Delete

NOTE: You can have as many workspaces as you like. When the documentation refers to moving "left" or "right", it means referring to the workspace immediately to the left or right of your current workspace. For example, if you are currently on Workspace 3, moving to the left workspace would switch you to Workspace 2. Moving to the right would shift you to Workspace 4, etc.

Ctrl + Alt + Left Arrow

Ctrl + Alt + Right Arrow

Ctrl + Alt + Shift + Left

Ctrl + Alt + Shift + Right

NOTE: This is different from launching the console terminal as this is still within the GUI. The GNOME Terminal can be moved around and minimized at will.

Ctrl + Alt + T

Super + E

Super

To cycle from left to right, use:

Alt + Tab

To cycle in the reverse direction, use:

Alt + Shift + Tab

By default Alt + Tab to cycle open windows will lump all instances of an application together. If you wish to cycle through those clumps of the same application (e.g. multiple File windows, multiple instances of Firefox, etc.), use the following command:

Alt + Grave (`)

Super + D

Super + Left

Super + Right

Super + Up

Print / PrtScr

Alt + PrtScr

Shift + Print

Shift + Ctrl + Alt + R