Arch Linux

mcloaked

Member

From: Yorkshire, UK

Registered: 2012-02-02

Posts: 1,360

plasma wayland session - firefox in wayland starts tiny window

If the plasma wayland session type is selected in the sddm greeter at bottom left, and the user logs in then the plasma session is running under wayland, and many applications that are started run in wayland. However by default firefox and thunderbird run in xwayland, which is legacy compat mode - and not true wayland.  However these can be started in true wayland compositor by either preceding them on the command line by MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1

or by putting a one line file in as per

cat .config/environment.d/60-moz-wayland.conf
MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1

Once Firefox is running it can be checked it is running in wayland by looking at the compositor line in about:support - however on my system firefox starts in a small window at top left and not with the window size I last used.  Maximising the firefox window does allow it to start maximised next time. 

Does anyone know a workaround for starting firefox in a specific (or the previous) window size when running in the wayland compositor?  When running in xwayland it starts fine as the previous window size so the problem only appears when running in wayland.

Edit: this happens on two machines, but a ryzen laptop with the same setup has Firefox start in a normal sized window in the normal top left position.

Last edited by mcloaked (2021-11-17 18:07:19)

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Mike C

mcloaked

Member

From: Yorkshire, UK

Registered: 2012-02-02

Posts: 1,360

Re: plasma wayland session - firefox in wayland starts tiny window

I found a work-around that resolved this for the two machines where it was a problem. With Firefox running in Plasma Wayland session, I right clicked the top of the window and under More Actions -> configure special window settings, where ,there are various options that include position and size that can be added using the '+' icon, and set to sensible values, and the pull down set to 'Remember', and then saving those settings now allows Firefox to start in the correct position and size. Why having special rules for the window behaviour should be necessary on some machines, but not all, is a mystery to me, but at least this is now working for Firefox running under the Wayland compositor.

Edit: It turned out that on the machines where this issue did not initially arise, logging out or rebooting, and starting Firefox, the Firefox window also then started small in the top left corner, but by dragging it to the correct size and right clicking the top of the window and setting the special config options for position and size and making sure that they were set to "Remember" then fixes the issue on all my machines now.  Given that Thunderbird is also a GTK app I thought this may happen for Thunderbird also, but it is possible that because I am using the current Thunderbird beta that the code may have more optimisation compared to the stable version, and the size on start issue has not arisen for Thunderbird 95,0b3.

Last edited by mcloaked (2021-11-18 10:47:54)

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Mike C

deadite66

Member

Registered: 2015-06-13

Posts: 33

Re: plasma wayland session - firefox in wayland starts tiny window

had the same problem and used the same fix.