Quickie: Disable shift-shift for Google Desktop
This has been driving me nuts. I’m typing along, and somehow all my Google gadgets come to the top and I lose focus. It’s the shift-shift shortcut. Google’s page on this describes it but has no info on how to disable it. They talk about the other shortcuts of course… Searching the web found a ton of people with the same problem all begging for help. I finally found the answer!
- Go to your Google Desktop prefs (right-click its icon in the tray and do Options)
- On the Display panel at the bottom for the Taskbar Gadgets Button section choose “Show icon only” and save your prefs. I bet you had this thing hidden like me, right? To save space in your taskbar?
- Click on the down arrow button in the new Google icon (looks like four colored boxes stuck together) and there it is! Choose Enable Hotkey to disable the damn thing.
- Now you can go back to prefs and hide the button again.
So to disable all the Google Desktop hotkeys, you need to (a) turn off ctrl-ctrl in Options, (b) (via the above Google link), edit the registry and reboot to disable the ctrl-alt-G, and (c) do the instructions I have above to disable shift-shift.
Hey Google, want to make this a little more consistent in a future release?
Thanks Scott, that really helped. I hated the bloody thing.
Nicholas Chambers
13 Mar 08 at 2:59 pm
Thanks, the shift-shift has been annoying me for a while
Adil
4 Jul 08 at 5:41 am
Awesome, thank you! I had tried google’s suggested registry hack to no avail, and this got me out of a fix. Thanks!
matt robertson
11 Aug 08 at 3:53 am
Thank you so much
Anonymous
17 Oct 08 at 11:10 am
Thank you very much for the information!
It helps me a lot:)
Hiroki
16 Nov 08 at 5:39 pm
Thanks a lot!
Harro
19 Nov 08 at 1:00 am
Scott, this is a work of genius! The noise level and layer of smashed keyboards in my office will no doubt now decrease exponentially.
Can’t believe it was there as an option all along! Matter of fact, I’m guessing I enabled the thing in the first place, then hid the icon.
Thanks also for trawling through the google desktop forums and contacting me.
Ed
19 Nov 08 at 12:31 pm
Scott,
Thanks much for posting this. I’ll make sure we add this information to our Support article to reduce confusion. Much appreciated!
Ben
Google Desktop Guide
Ben
20 Nov 08 at 11:28 am
I actually had one more comment…
Just keep in mind that you now have no way to bring undocked gadgets to focus with both the hotkey and the gadgets button disabled. You may want to enable at least the gadget icon (smaller footprint than the text button) so you can still use this feature.
Cheers,
Ben
Google Desktop Guide at the Google Desktop Help forum
http://groups.google.com/group/google-desktop
Ben
21 Nov 08 at 11:36 am
Thanks for the updates Ben.
Scott
21 Nov 08 at 11:40 am
This is awesome! However, despite Ben’s comment I am having the following difficulty
So the shift-shift invoke is indeed a pain, and is now banished.
However the esc-esc invoke, despite being switched on in preferences now doesn’t work (either with or without the google icon showing)
And the Win-Space invoke for gadgets (which is much harder to accidentally trigger, and is great) also doesn’t work.
So now I’ve gone from too sensitive an invoke, to none at all. Being brought up on Goldilocks, I wonder if there is something to suit the middle bear?
George
18 Jan 09 at 1:37 pm
Haha, man. I hope Ben comes back and turns this into a feature request to redo the key config stuff.
Every other Windows app out there that has global hotkeys has a dialog to configure them. Google Desktop has been out for how many years now?
Scott
19 Jan 09 at 5:09 pm
Thanks a ton. I thought I saw something for disabling it somewhere, but forgot about disabling the gadget task bar. It’s been driving me nuts for months.
Bruce
3 Feb 09 at 2:37 pm
Thank you very very much!!!
Sieghard
24 Jan 10 at 7:48 am
this clearly worked once upon a time, but google has updated the interface.
There seems to be some very peristant confusion between double shift and double ctrl, even on the google desk top.
these instructions now give you two ways to get to the same options page, which ha a way to turn off the double-ctrl, but not the double shift.
It would be helpful if the double shift etc hotkeys were actually hotkeys in the sense they gave you a quick way to get to a menu item, but as near as i can tell if you turn off the hot key sequence, you disable the feature. there is no alternative way to make the gadgets come and go. (hide and unhide).
bill
3 Feb 11 at 4:14 pm
“even on the google desk top.”
should read
“even on the google desk top web page at
for google desktop help at groups.google.com”
s in
http://groups.google.com/group/google-desktop_something-broken/browse_thread/thread/cb3d0018581b0497
bill
3 Feb 11 at 4:24 pm
This info no longer applies. Apparently google wants to make it annoying as hell and force us to use double shift.
What idiot thought that was a good idea in the first place?
Sean
23 Sep 11 at 12:57 pm
The info doesn’t apply because there is no longer an option, anywhere, to turn off double shift.
They have deliberately removed it.
What does it take to get a working desktop gadget application?
There seems to be nothing out there.
I need my email sent directly to my desktop, I need my calendar events right there at all times.
I do NOT need bs from Google about a stupid hotkey fail that gets in the way of EVERY other task I do.
What does it take? really?
Sean
23 Sep 11 at 1:03 pm