Environment: Laptop with an external monitor, Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.
Setting: The external monitor is set as the primary display.
Problem: Some applications still launch on the laptop screen (non‑primary display), which does not match the expected behavior.
What happens if you move those apps to the primary monitor, close them and then re-open them?
According to a comment on the GNOME Discourse:
By default, the app will open on the screen which your mouse cursor is in it while opening the app.
If you restart the computer, it will fail. If you reopen the applications, they will display normally.
That’s not what I asked, but I suspect some kind of language barrier, given your screenshot in the other thread.
Also not quite an answer to my question. Where do the apps open? I think GNOME, Ubuntu’s desktop environment, has a memory and will start apps on the same monitor on which they were seen last. And if they are started for the first time, they just launch on the monitor which has the mouse pointer in it.
Can you check if that works? It may not be what you initially expected, but it may be how it actually works. Plus, it’d make a lot of sense. Sadly, I only have my laptop screen and cannot actually test this myself.
If only some applications do not recognize your primary display being the external monitor, then that tells me that you need to either
-
modify Application-specific configuration files (if display is specifiable as parameter), or
-
file a bug with each of the Developers of those Apps reporting their improper hard-coding of the default display, rather than obtaining the display target from the environment.
Also, if both displays are simultaneously active, I don’t know the mechanics of it, but it may be an issue of default placement coordinates on the larger “display canvas”.
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 30 days. New replies are no longer allowed.