Arch Linux

mutaphore

Member

From: NY

Registered: 2014-12-19

Posts: 29

[SOLVED] Problem with Gnome shell window shadow

I've been recently playing around with gnome shell themes and I'm getting this weird boxy shadow effect around all my windows. Any ideas what's going on?

Edit: Actually not all my windows, this happens on all the drop down windows from the top bar and when I hit Alt-Tab to switch windows.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/161 … 9%3A52.png

Last edited by mutaphore (2015-01-11 17:35:41)

ooo

Member

Registered: 2013-04-10

Posts: 1,638

Re: [SOLVED] Problem with Gnome shell window shadow

those shadows are drawn by gnome-shell (while shadows under application windows are drawn by window manager), and are 100% themeable from your gnome-shell theme. So this is most likely a bug in your current shell theme.

mutaphore

Member

From: NY

Registered: 2014-12-19

Posts: 29

Re: [SOLVED] Problem with Gnome shell window shadow

I am using gnome-tweak-tool to adjust settings. Changing the shell-theme back to Defaults and even disabling User themes in Extensions still doesn't fix it. However, weird thing is that if I set Shell theme to "Elegance" the shadow for top bar goes away (although the alt-tab window still does it). Is there anyway to reset the theme to factory defaults?

ooo

Member

Registered: 2013-04-10

Posts: 1,638

Re: [SOLVED] Problem with Gnome shell window shadow

If you select the default theme or disable user themes extension, it will use the default theme.
So, unless you've managed to break the default theme somehow, the issue could be caused by something more interesting.

Have you checked arch wiki if there happened to be some known issue with your gfx card that could cause rendering errors e.g. using SNA with intel cards?

as a workaround, it is possible to disable shadows in the gnome-shell theme completely. If you don't care hacking the theme css, you could use elegance-colors theme which enables you to disable the shadows with a simple gui.

EDIT. apparently you already tried elegance successfully. sorry I missed that

Last edited by ooo (2015-01-02 09:24:11)

ziggy

Member

From: Riga, Latvia

Registered: 2007-04-28

Posts: 23

Re: [SOLVED] Problem with Gnome shell window shadow

I had the same issue, but on Debian testing machine which has Intel graphics card.
And it is somehow related to Intel SNA.
I had the following in my xorg.conf file:

Section "Device"
        Identifier "intel"
        Driver "intel"
        Option "AccelMethod" "sna"
EndSection

I removed xorg.conf file and now my shadows look good.

I hope this helps!

mutaphore

Member

From: NY

Registered: 2014-12-19

Posts: 29

Re: [SOLVED] Problem with Gnome shell window shadow

I had the same issue, but on Debian testing machine which has Intel graphics card.
And it is somehow related to Intel SNA.
I had the following in my xorg.conf file:

Section "Device"
        Identifier "intel"
        Driver "intel"
        Option "AccelMethod" "sna"
EndSection

I removed xorg.conf file and now my shadows look good.

I hope this helps!

I'm running a mid 2012 macbook pro retina and using the nouveau graphics driver. I believe this machine uses an intel graphics card (not the GeForce card that later MBPr have). The problem is that I've never had this issue before I decided to try custom themes. Why does just switching back to the Elegance theme make it go away?

mutaphore

Member

From: NY

Registered: 2014-12-19

Posts: 29

Re: [SOLVED] Problem with Gnome shell window shadow

Issue resolved after uninstalling gnome and reinstalling gnome again.