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Wait, it is not simply "key in the top left" regardless of layout? That is how it works in any Linux desktop at least.

No. On German and Swiss layouts, that key is a dead key: it doesn't type anything by itself when you press it. It's meant to combine with another subsequent keypress in order to yield a whole glyph with a diacritic as in, e.g., backtick followed by "e" giving "è."

It's been a while since I've been at a proper QWERTZ layout aus dem Sprachgebiet over a US QWERTY keyboard, but my memory is that the dead keys have odd behaviors when you try to incorporate them into shortcuts.

What key are you referring to, the backtick key, or the Alt+[KEY] used by the app?

The alt+[key]. On linux it is alt+tab (between different apps) and alt+[key physically above tab] (between windows of the same app), regardless of keyboard layout. Moving the shortcut away from there or even to convoluted things like "Alt+Shift+´+Space" seems very strange, hence the the question.

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