The script will show a popup prompting the user to confirm before killing all the windows. The script bellow kills all active windows of the currently active window that user is working in. The following code extracts all window ids and closes them gracefully: #!/usr/bin/env python3 For example if I opened several Okular (a KDE PDF viewer) windows, the code won't close all windows, as different window ids are assigned to the windows. The answer by user72216 didn't work always. If you are not using an English version of Ubuntu, replace 'Desktop' by the localized name of the Desktop in your language. 'Desktop' is referring to your Desktop window, which normally should always stay. If you are closing all nautilus windows, in the line if pid in w and not 'Desktop' in w: Subsequently, the list of currently opened windows is called with the command: wmctrl -lpįrom this list, the corresponding windows are picked and closed with the command: wmctrl -ic The script then first finds out the pid of the frontmost window, with the command: xdotool getactivewindow getwindowpid Wmctrl does ask what to do however, similar to Ctrl+ Q. Tested on a gedit window with unsaved changes, all of them closed the window happily however, without any interaction. I tried the various kill options ( kill -2, kill -HUP, kill -s TERM etc), which are mentioned in several posts to close an application gracefully. Now the shortcut can be used to gracefully close all windows of the frontmost window. don't use ~ or $HOME in a shortcut key, but use absolute paths instead. Click the '+' and add the command: python3 /path/to/stop_active.py Subprocess.call(])Īdd the following command to a shortcut key: python3 /path/to/stop_active.pyĬhoose: System Settings > 'Keyboard' > 'Shortcuts' > 'Custom Shortcuts'. Return subprocess.check_output(cmd).decode('utf-8').strip() Install both xdotool and wmctrl sudo apt-get install wmctrl xdotoolĬopy the script below into an empty file, save it as stop_active.py #!/usr/bin/env python3 To use it in a script to close all windows of an application:

The safest way to close an application's window gracefully, and make sure you will not lose data, is using wmctrl (not installed by default): wmctrl -ic How to safely close all windows of a gui application with a shortcut key

Hotkey to close all windows openttd