(Lubuntu) The menus in GTK apps don't work when Picom is running

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1

OS/Flavor: Lubuntu 24.04.4 LTS

Desktop Environment: LXQt

Problem:

when I open a GTK app while Picom is enabled and running, the menus in the UI of the app (like drop-down and select menus) don’t work when I click them.

What I’ve Tried:

I’ve tried managing effects of window types and exclude _GTK_FRAME_EXTENTS in picom.conf, but that still won’t work!

System Information:

OS: Lubuntu 24.04.4 LTS

kernel: Linux 6.17.0-35-generic

Host: Toshiba Satellite L755

Picom version: V13 (backend: xrender)

Window manager: Openbox 3.6.1 (X11)

LXQt version: 1.4.0

CPU: Intel(R) Core™ i3-2310M (4) @ 2.10 GHz

GPU: integrated

(yeah, my laptop is old)

2

The most common reason for frozen or unclickable menus with Picom is that it’s trying to draw shadows or apply effects to popups, causing an invisible layer to block your actual clicks.

  1. Open your Picom configuration file. This is usually located at ~/.config/picom/picom.conf or /etc/xdg/picom.conf.
  2. Look for the shadow-exclude section.
  3. Add rules to exclude menus and dropdowns. Update the section so it looks like this:
shadow-exclude = [
    "window_type = 'menu'",
    "window_type = 'dropdown_menu'",
    "window_type = 'popup_menu'",
    "window_type = 'tooltip'",
    "_GTK_FRAME_EXTENTS@:c"
];

After saving your picom.conf, you don’t need to restart your whole computer. Just kill and restart Picom from your terminal to see if it worked:

killall picom
picom &
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3

For some reason, that didn’t work. I did exactly what you said but menus still don’t open.

1 Like
4

OK, wind back the update you made

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5

Are you using Wayland or Xorg? If you switch to the other is it OK there?

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6

I’m using Xorg. I don’t know how to switch between Xorg and Wayland because I can’t find that option at the login screen.

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7

nevermind, I tried configuring picom.conf and the issue has finally been fixed, the menus in my GTK apps are opening now! :slight_smile:

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8

Posting exactly what you did and then marking it as the solution will help others if they have the same problem.

1 Like
9

here’s what I did that worked:

I opened picom.conf and updated the shadow-exclude = section:

shadow-exclude = [ “_GTK_FRAME_EXTENTS_" “window_type = ‘popup_menu’”, “window_type = ‘tooltip’”, “window_type = ‘dropdown_menu’”, “window_type = ‘menu’” ];

I updated the blur-background-exclude = section like this:

blur-background-exclude = [ “window_type = ‘popup_menu’”, “window_type = ‘tooltip’”, “window_type = ‘menu’”, “window_type = ‘dropdown_menu’”, “_GTK_FRAME_EXTENTS” ];

I updated the wintypessection like this:

wintypes :
{
tooltip :
{
fade = false;
shadow = false;
};
popup_menu :
{
fade = false;
shadow = false;
};
dropdown_menu :
{
fade = false;
shadow = false;
};
menu :
{
fade = false;
shadow = false;
};
};

and I added/updated some sections:

unredir-if-possible = false;

use-damage = false;

xrender-sync-fence = true;
no-fading-openclose = true;

menu-opacity = 1.0;

I then restarted picom by doing this:

killall picom && picom -b

NOTE: this works with Picom V13 with xrender as the backend.

3 Likes
10

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