Arch Linux

thie

Member

Registered: 2023-11-19

Posts: 5

[Solved] Some application windows not showing

As of today I started experiencing strange problems with several application windows not showing.
I am running Gnome on X11. Usually I do the pacman system update directly after starting the desktop, firefox and thunderbird are usually already running at this point.
I first noticed that firefox would not show popup windows like the 'popout' window one can do for youtube videos.
But if I hovered the mouse over the firefox icon in the task bar (I am using Dash to Panel btw.) it would show the preview of the popup window(s), so they were actually
created, just not showing.
At some later point I had quit firefox but then when I restarted it the initial window would no longer show. I could however open a new window right clicking on the
icon in the taskbar and that one would come up.
I could not get the first window to show however, not via <alt> <tab> and not via the taskbar icon.
And there are several other applications/iocns on my taskbar that exhibit the same behaviour, among which Krusader and KopiaUI.
Like firefox Krusader shows the window preview when hovering over its icon with the mouse, so it's window has been created.
KopiaUI had no problem earlier this week as I created a snapshot 3 days ago.
Since I saw that there were recent updates to webkit packages among others I tried rolling the whole system back a few days using pacman but that did not make a difference.
I then restored my ~/.mozilla directory from a recent a backup and that has at least fixed this issue for firefox for now.
Any ideas which direction I should be looking into?

Last edited by thie (2025-09-05 12:23:26)

thie

Member

Registered: 2023-11-19

Posts: 5

Re: [Solved] Some application windows not showing

Additional information that may be related: a number of times today my mouse pointer has gone missing. It would come back after some time.

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 73,695

Re: [Solved] Some application windows not showing

Sounds like a problem w/ the mutter (gnoem WM) compositor, please post your Xorg log, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xorg#General

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thie

Member

Registered: 2023-11-19

Posts: 5

Re: [Solved] Some application windows not showing

After updating today Krusader is back in business and things seems normal again so not going to pursue this now for lack of time.

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 73,695

Re: [Solved] Some application windows not showing

Please always remember to mark resolved threads by editing your initial posts subject - so others will know that there's no task left, but maybe a solution to find.
Thanks.

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How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

thie

Member

Registered: 2023-11-19

Posts: 5

Re: [Solved] Some application windows not showing

This thing is still going on, now having trouble with the Discord window not showing. Other symptoms, after a suspend and resume, the lock screen does not show the unlock/password popup. I can still type the password to unlock the screen. Mouse pointer also invisible again for some time. Firefox video popup out windows also not showing. I will see if there is anything in the Xorg log.

Last edited by thie (2025-09-05 10:47:09)

thie

Member

Registered: 2023-11-19

Posts: 5

Re: [Solved] Some application windows not showing

I believe I now know what causes this behaviour. Last week I had some trouble with the HDMI inputs of my monitor which led me to hooking up a mini-Displayport cable. This cable was still plugged in now the HDMI issue had been sorted, so there were two cables from my desktop to the monitor. Once I unplugged the mini-Displayport cable all problems mentioned above immediately went away.