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Dialog boxes appearing when I click "save" or "open" in some programs open up on my laptop's small screen instead of on my main external one. I would like them to open on my main display. What defines the position of secondary windows like this ?

I also noticed an issue: if I try to drag those secondary windows from my laptop's display to my main display, it causes the main window to move instead of the secondary one. I have a third party Gnome theme active, could it be the source of the issue?

What might be causing this ?

Emile Papillon-Corbeil
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1 Answers1

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Possibly you are describing a (weird) feature of the windowing system.

Try issuing the following in a terminal window:

gsettings set org.gnome.mutter attach-modal-dialogs false

This should take care of (at least) the part where the parent windows move when dragging the dialogs.

If you want a graphical interface to control this, install either:

  • gnome-tweaks
    • It has a "Windows" sidebar item, and on the corresponding panel a toggle called "Attach Modal Dialogs".
  • dconf-editor
    • You can navigate to the org.gnome.mutter schema and click the toggle for attach-modal-dialogs.

All these things do the same thing, toggling this feature of the windowing system on/off.

Levente
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  • Thank you, this partially solved my problem. Now I can move the modal dialogs without moving the parent. But the secondary windows (modal dialogs?) still open on my other display. So I will wait before marking this as accepted answer. Is this something controlled by Gnome or the X Server or is this comming from the applications settings? – Emile Papillon-Corbeil Feb 13 '21 at 16:19
  • @EmilePapillon-Corbeil In this other thread Vanadium said that the location of windows may get determined by an algorithm within mutter (the window manager): https://askubuntu.com/a/1315240/1157519 – Levente Feb 13 '21 at 16:36
  • I would definitely give it a reboot to see if it changes anything... Maybe a new boot with the external screen disconnected, and giving apps a bit of exercise (including dialog-box triggering stuff), and then yet another boot with the external screen reattached... – Levente Feb 13 '21 at 16:48
  • Disconnecting the external screen and reconnecting it did the trick. I should've thought about this earlier :) I'm still curious as to what saved information made it behave the way it did, but that's just my curiosity... – Emile Papillon-Corbeil Feb 13 '21 at 17:50