UbuntuHandbook

How to Enable & Configure Hot-Corners in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Last updated: October 9, 2022 — 1 Comment

This simple tutorial shows how to enable and customize hot-corner actions in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with default GNOME desktop.

Your system can do a custom action, when moving mouse corner to hit one of the 4 (top-left, top-right, bottom-left, and bottom-right) screen edges. That’s hot-corners function.

By default, the top-left hot-corner is enabled for triggering the overview screen. You can however enable all the 4 corners and specify custom actions via an extension in all GNOME based Linux.

Step 1: Install Extension Manager

For Ubuntu 22.04 & 22.10, it’s easy to install and manager extensions via “Extension Manager” tool. First, search for and install the tool from Ubuntu Software app.

Install Extension Manager in Ubuntu 22.04

After that, click on top-left ‘Activities’ button to open overview screen. Then search for and open the ‘Extension Manager’ app.

Step 2: Install Custom Hot Corners extension

Once ‘Extension Manager’ opens, navigate to ‘Browse’ tab. Then, search for and install ‘Custom Hot Corners – Extended‘ extension.

Install Hot Corners Extension via ‘Extension Manager’

After installed it, switch back ‘Installed’ tab and click on the gear button to configure hot-corners.

Open Hot Corners settings

Under ‘Monitor‘ tab, choose one of the 4 corners via first row icons. Then select an action to do via the drop-down menu right below.

As you see, it also support custom actions for “Ctrl + mouse hit hot-corner”, “mouse click or scroll on corner”, “Ctrl + click or scroll on corner”.

And you can specify following actions to do with the extension: Show Activities overview, show app grid, run custom command, launch screenshot UI, hide all app windows (current or all monitors), switch workspaces, navigate windows, toggle screen brightness, nightlight, video playback control and more.

The extension is a bit overloaded in my opinion as it also support adding keyboard shortcuts and custom menu for all supported actions, though you may just skip to leave them all disabled.

In Howtos hot corners

How to Set up Hot Corners in Ubuntu 20.04 Gnome Shell

Last updated: February 11, 2022

This simple tutorial shows how to enable and set up hot corners features in Ubuntu 20.04 with the default Gnome desktop.

With hot corners enabled, when you move the mouse cursor and hit one of the screen corners, it performs a predefined action (e.g., show desktop, open application launcher, launch a software, and run custom command).

The default Gnome desktop only supports top-left corner opening Activities overview, though it’s not enabled by default. You can however set up more actions for the 4 corners via a Gnome Shell extension.

NOTE: Skip the first 2 steps if you’re not first time installing a Gnome Shell extension.

1.) Open terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard, then run command:

sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell

2.) Go to extensions.gnome.org, and click the link to install the browser integration.

3.) Click the link to go to custom hot corner extension page, then toggle on and click install the extension.

Once installed, select hot corner actions via extension setting either by Extensions utility or Gnome Tweaks tool.

Tip: To enable ‘show desktop’ function, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal and run command to install the wmctrl package (Thanks to @Peter Huang):

sudo apt install wmctrl

In Howtos hot corners

How to Enable Hot Corners in Ubuntu 18.04, 19.04

Last updated: July 3, 2019

This quick tutorial shows how to enable hot corners in Ubuntu 18.04 and higher Gnome shell.

While Gnome Tweaks provides only option to enable top-left hot corner (Activities overview), users can enable more hot corners in Gnome desktop via an extension called ‘Custom Hot Corners’.

The extension enables multi-monitor hot corners with actions including Toggle overview, Show desktop, Show applications, and custom command.

To install the extension, simply open Ubuntu Software, search for and install ‘custom hot corners’

Then you can bring up the configuration page via Gnome Tweaks (install it via Ubuntu Software) -> Extensions page.

In addition, wmctrl is required for ‘Show desktop’ action. Simply open terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T and run command to install the library:

sudo apt install wmctrl

That’s it. Enjoy!

In Howtos hot corners, hot corners Ubuntu 18.04

Install Hot Corners Plugin for Xfce4 Desktop in Ubuntu 14.04/15.04

Last updated: July 14, 2017

XFCE4 desktop now has a hot-corner panel plugin that provides an easy way for users to set hot corner action, though there’s already a Gnome app brightside works on Ubuntu with Xfce.

XFCE4 HotCorner Plugin is a new project created one week ago. It currently supports the following operation in primary display:

xfdashboard
toggle desktop
start screensaver
turn off monitor
run custom command

It also provides an option to disable hot corner when active window is fullscreen.

Install HotCorner Plugin in (X)Ubuntu:

Update: Thanks to Jackson Doak, the most recent packages have been made into Xubuntu Extras PPA. So far, Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 15.04, and Ubuntu 14.04 (Xfce 4.12 is not required) are supported.

To install the HotCorner plugin and receive future updates, run below commands one by one in a terminal emulator:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xubuntu-dev/extras

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install xfce4-hotcorner-plugin

For those who don’t want to add PPA, grab the .deb package from ~~launchpad page~~.

This plugin ~~requires XFCE 4.12~~. For (X)Ubuntu 14.04 and (X)Ubuntu 15.04 and Mint 17 users who are still running with old Xfce desktop, you may first read this guide to upgrade to Xfce 4.12

To install the plugin, select download one of below packages that matches your OS type (32-bit=i386 or 64-bit=amd64)

xfce4-hotcorner-plugin_0.0.2-0ubuntu1~15.10_amd64.deb
xfce4-hotcorner-plugin_0.0.2-0ubuntu1~15.10_i386.deb

from the ppa packages download page:

~~download xfce4-hotcorner-plugin (.deb)~~

Then double-click to install the package via Software Center, or install it via dpkg command.

NOTE 1: the packages were built against Ubuntu 15.10 Wily, but they work on old Ubuntu releases (tested in 14.04) running with Xfce 4.12.

NOTE 2: Xubuntu Extras PPA also provides the packages for this plugin, ~~but it’s an old release with bugs at the moment of writing this post.~~

After installing the plugin, go to Xfce4 panel preference window and add HotCorner plugin to panel:

Finally set your hot corners actions from the plugin’s preference window and enjoy!

In Howtos hot corners, xfce4

How to Enable Hot Corners in XFCE Desktop [Quick Tip]

Last updated: July 2, 2015

This is a quick tip that shows you how to enable and tweak hot corners actions in (X)Ubuntu Xfce Desktop.

Brightside is a gnome support hot corners app which also works in Xfce Desktop. It allows you to assign configurable actions to occur while you rest the mouse in a corner of the screen.

Currently available actions comprise: