Cinnamon Alt-Tab: Current-Monitor Toggle

Adds a “Show windows from current monitor only” option to Cinnamon’s Alt-Tab.
Includes a safe patch/unpatch script that edits the Cinnamon schema, Settings panel, and app switcher JS, recompiles schemas, and restarts Cinnamon automatically.

• ✅ Detects existing/manual patches (won’t duplicate changes)
• ✅ Clearly marked BEGIN/END blocks for clean removal
• ✅ Timestamped backups of modified files
• ✅ status command to inspect current state

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What it changes

1. Schema: Adds alttab-switcher-show-current-monitor to org.cinnamon.gschema.xml (default false)
2. Settings → Windows: Adds a toggle row in cs_windows.py
3. Alt-Tab logic: Makes appSwitcher.js filter to current monitor when the key is true

The script compiles schemas and runs cinnamon --replace automatically.

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Requirements

• Cinnamon desktop (Linux Mint or other distros with Cinnamon)
• Root privileges to modify system files & compile schemas
• Default paths (adjust in script if your distro differs):
  • /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/org.cinnamon.gschema.xml
  • /usr/share/cinnamon/cinnamon-settings/modules/cs_windows.py
  • /usr/share/cinnamon/js/ui/appSwitcher/appSwitcher.js

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Screenshots

Before

After

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Install

git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/cinnamon-alt-tab-current-monitor-toggle.git
cd cinnamon-alt-tab-current-monitor-toggle
chmod +x cinnamon-current-monitor-toggle.sh

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Usage

Apply patch

./cinnamon-current-monitor-toggle.sh patch

Enable/disable at runtime:

gsettings set org.cinnamon alttab-switcher-show-current-monitor true   # enable
gsettings set org.cinnamon alttab-switcher-show-current-monitor false  # disable

Unpatch (clean removal of our blocks)

./cinnamon-current-monitor-toggle.sh unpatch

If it detects manual/unmarked edits, it leaves them intact and warns you.

Status

./cinnamon-current-monitor-toggle.sh status

Shows presence of the schema key, settings toggle, JS logic, and whether our markers are present.

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How detection works

• Schema: Skips insertion if org.cinnamon already has the key
• Settings: Skips if cs_windows.py already references the key
• JS: Skips if appSwitcher.js already contains the logic (with or without our markers)

Unpatch removes only our BEGIN/END:CURRENT_MONITOR_PATCH blocks. Manual changes are not touched.

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Safety & recovery

• Backups are created next to each modified file (e.g. *.bak.YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS)
• If Cinnamon doesn’t come back after restart, log out/in or run:

  cinnamon --replace &

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Notes

• GSettings overrides (*.gschema.override) cannot add new keys; we edit the schema and recompile.
• Distro updates may overwrite these files; simply run patch again if needed.

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License

MIT — see LICENSE.