"Sticky Edge" is neither obvious nor explained

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

gnome-control-center 1:3.3.92-0ubuntu4, Ubuntu Pangolin

The "Displays" panel includes a "Sticky Edge" switch.

If "Sticky Edge" was a well-known term amongst people who use computer displays (like "Sticky Keys" is for disabled people, for example), this might make sense. But it isn't, and doesn't.

Unfortunately I can't suggest a replacement, because I don't know what "Sticky Edge" does either.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Achim Behrens (k1l)]

It is the stopping at the edge betweeen the monitors.

take a look into the description of this bug or into the posted video: https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity-2d/+bug/946104

[Adolfo Jayme Barrientos (fitojb)]

A replacement would be a checkbox like:

 [x] Avoid my mouse cursor to be accidentally lost in another display

But I'm afraid that it's rather long, and anyway this setting is too "advanced" to be shown in the place where it is. And note that I don't fully understand the purpose of the "Sticky Edges" and what problem is solving, so take the above checkbox only as an idea of a self-explaining setting.

[Benjamin J Norton (leomcsnarf)]

I had to look up what "sticky edges" means. I consider myself proficient with computers and Linux distrobutions but this term totally had me at a loss...

[John Lea (johnlea)]

Marking as opinion until this opinion is validated or disproved in user testing.

[Simon Feltman (s-feltman)]

This option was turned on by default after a recent update. I thought it was a bug and it was driving me crazy, I'm used to smoothly dragging windows between dual monitors. After looking around, I finally found the "Sticky Edges" setting in display settings and turned it off.

[w-sky (w-sky)]

I too find the term "Sticky Edges" inapprehensible. Also I wonder why this option is not greyed out in a single display setup, since it affects only multi display setups.

May I suggest: "Make mouse stick to display edges".

Intuitionally I did expect the "Sticky edges" switch to control if windows should stick to screen edges and/or automatically resize when moving them. But a switch for that function is completely missing, is it?

Also at this point I expected and I consider to be necessary the following: a switch to enable and disable moving windows to other workspaces with the mouse. Using Unity, currently windows can only freely be moved around workspaces using the mouse when the workspace switcher has been activated. Also, a switch to allow mouse movements to other workspaces would be cool.

I do mention this here because this is somehow the same as or related to sticky edges, but for workspaces.

[Hans Harhoff Andersen (hansharhoff)]

At the very least it should have a tooltip with an explanation or there should be a help button for displays.

[Tamas Papp (tompos)]

Agreed.

I disabled now, so I can move my cursor between monitors easily, but it still stops sometimes.

What is the right way for moving mouse cursor between displays? Make it fast?:) Really, I cannot find a proper and/or official description.

[Diego Torres Milano (diego-pxes)]

And it's not even along all edges...

[Cody Skinner (wskinner)]

I know this "bug" is years old at this point, but I'd like to make a suggestion. In the display options in the System Settings GUI, could we add a mouse over tool tip to the Sticky Edge option? So that when a user holds their cursor over the option, it'll display a tooltip saying "When using multiple displays, stop the cursor at the edge."

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

A tooltip is harder to see than always-visible UI text. Therefore, a tooltip should be used only when there isn’t enough space to convey the information otherwise. That’s why System Settings hardly ever uses tooltips: because there *is* enough space to convey the needed information without them.

Even if that wasn’t true, the fact that System Settings hardly ever uses tooltips means that for any particular element in System Settings, people would not expect it to have a tooltip. If people aren’t expecting it to exist, they won’t put in the effort to reveal it, so it isn’t an effective way of conveying information.

Anyway, I’m now responsible for the design of System Settings, so I finally get to fix this.