The display settings in gnome-control-center are annoying to use for multiple monitors

[Rocko]

Adjusting display settings for multiple monitors in gnome-shell in Ubuntu 17.10/18.04 is really annoying due to its user-unfriendly operation:

1. When you select a resolution, you have to go and look for the small close button in the resolution selection window's titlebar and manually close the resolution selection window. It should close the window automatically when you select the resolution.

2. When you change the scaling (eg from 200% to 100%), it always resets the monitor layout to left-right. So if you have already changed it to above/below and then you change the scaling from 200% to 100% for the primary monitor, the layout resets to left-right and you have to change it back again.

3. The default in X11 when it forgets the monitor settings is to set native resolutions on both monitors. In X11, if the laptop monitor is 4K and the external monitor say 1920x1080, in X11 it inexplicably sets both to scale to 200%, so the text etc on the external monitor is gigantic. (IIRC, it doesn't have this problem in Wayland - it will set the 4K to 200% and the external to 100%.)

4. In case 3, when I change the 4K display to 1920x1020 and then change the scaling from 200% to 100%, the 'Apply' button disappears so it's impossible to select the new configuration. (It seems that it considers these different configurations to be equivalent, perhaps because they have both been divided by two?)

This is made worse by the fact that normally g-c-c remembers settings for different monitors (ie resolutions and display layouts for different monitors), but it completely forgets when either:

a) You switch between Wayland and X11;

b) At apparent random intervals, particularly if you change monitors (eg from a 1920x1080 one to a 1680x1050 one).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: gnome-control-center 1:3.26.2-0ubuntu5
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-10.11-generic 4.15.3
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-10-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.8-0ubuntu10
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Thu Mar 8 11:05:49 2018
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-08-16 (203 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 17.04 "Zesty Zapus" - Release amd64 (20170412)
SourcePackage: gnome-control-center
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to bionic on 2017-11-17 (110 days ago)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. Could you try on newer versions if that's still an issue? On 18.10 with a laptop and external monitor here there is no close buttons to pick a resolution, just a combo you select from and changing the factor doesn't reset the layout (the 2 monitors are stacked vertically and stay this way). It looks like those issues are resolved?
Also it's best to open a separate ticket for each issue you describe, it's easier to deal with this way

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

I think these issues are all fixed in 19.04 except that gnome-shell stores screen configurations in different places for Wayland and X.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Good, closing the bug then. The shared configuration could be a wishlist to report upstream still though