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ephemeralCuriosities

Member

From: Puerto Rico

Registered: 2014-11-23

Posts: 34

GNOME 3: Primary monitor not correctly detected by some apps

I've been searching throughout the web and forums for an answer to this one. Since I can't find any I think it's finally time to post here.

I switched to GNOME about a month ago and have been having issues where programs (mainly games) refuse to load on the primary monitor, instead loading on the leftmost one. Doesn't matter where the mouse is or if there's an application currently on focus on the right side. Also, the issue only happens on GNOME, and it happens with both the X11 and Wayland backends (also tested on Plasma 5 and bspwm and it works correctly on both of them, though I've no plans to switch to either of them for various reasons).

Setup is just two monitors with the primary monitor being the one on the right, and so far the only workaround I've found is rearranging the monitors so that the primary one is on the left side (in which case everything just loads there correctly). However, the second monitor is a Cintiq and I cannot physically switch it to the rightmost side without sacrificing comfort while working, meaning I can't exactly do that once and forget about it. And while I can always temporarily rearrange stuff via either GNOME's display menu or ARandR and rearrange them back to normal after I'm done gaming, I'd much rather have a more permanent solution.

Oh, and I also tried deleting the monitors.xml file and restarting (didn't change a thing). Should probably point that out.

In case anyone wants to try for themselves and see if they have the same problem or if they can find a common link, here are the games/programs I'm currently having this issue with:

- Steam's Big Picture Mode
- Read Only Memories (both Steam and DRM-free)
- Hyper Light Drifter (DRM-free, latest update when run on windowed fullscreen - original version loaded correctly)
- Else Heart.Break() (DRM-free)
- Sigils of Elohim
- The Banner Saga

brittyazel

Member

From: Davis, CA

Registered: 2013-05-11

Posts: 163

Re: GNOME 3: Primary monitor not correctly detected by some apps

I don't know a proper solution to this, but a hacky way to fix it might just be to switch the monitor inputs around and then reverse the primary/secondary order

Last edited by brittyazel (2016-04-17 23:29:24)

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I don't really know what I'm doing.

ephemeralCuriosities

Member

From: Puerto Rico

Registered: 2014-11-23

Posts: 34

Re: GNOME 3: Primary monitor not correctly detected by some apps

Kinda impossible to do, I'm afraid. Main monitor uses DVI, Cintiq uses HDMI on a specialized cable. Even if the monitor supported HDMI I can't switch because of that.