Unity Dual-Monitor full screen applications incorrect behavior

[André Oliveira]

When an application is full screen (ex.: VLC) and you change focus to another application on another window, the top and side bars cover the full screen application.
 With the sidebar hidden, the top bar still covers the full screen application.

The proper behavior should be the application should always stay above the bars.

[David Sommen (davidsommen)]

This is also an issue for me. When I play vlc on my tv with a fullscreen movie and at the same time bring the focus to an application on my other monitor (e.g. open firefox), the launcher and top panel become visible on my other monitor, on top of the fullscreen movie.

[David Sommen (davidsommen)]

This screenshot shows that on the external monitor (TV, on the right) the top panel is visible while I am browsing using my main monitor on the left. If I allow the unity launcher to be visible on both monitors in system settings -> displays, the unity launcher is also visible.

[David Sommen (davidsommen)]

Since the release of unity 5.10 it seems there is a slight change in this behaviour. The title of the application only appears on the panel of the monitor where the application is set. So now if you are watching a movie/presentation at fullscreen on the secondary monitor, the top panel DOES still become visible when the focus is brought to another application on the other monitor, but the title does not keep changing when there is task switching or browsing between different web pages, etc. This is a slight improvement, although I'm not sure it is intentional in relation to this bug :)

[Hanine HAMZIOUI (hanynowsky)]

The unity panel does not dodge the fullscreen display window but hides the top part of it which makes this bug a very ugly unity user experience.
A parameter in compiz settings to auto-hide the panel when using fullscreen mode, would be useful!

[David Sommen (davidsommen)]

The Top Panel should NEVER be visible on top of any fullscreen application, regardless of on what application the focus is set. So in my opinion, a auto-hiding option could function as a workaround, but not a complete solution to this problem.

If video is fullscreen, the launcher and/or top panel should NEVER cover the video.

[David Sommen (davidsommen)]

This problem does not occur on unity-2D, in my experience.

[David Sommen (davidsommen)]

This bug seems to be fixed on my system.

[David Sommen (davidsommen)]

Edit: I have worked around it, at least. If you enable 'Always on top' in Preferences -> Video, the top panel does not come over the video anymore.

[Rune K. Svendsen (runeks)]

Thanks for workaround David. This works for me. The problem is till persistent without using this workaround for me, however. So I wouldn't say it's fixed.

Can we agree that the panel should never displayed on top of fullscreen applications?

I figure the issue might be that dual screen use wasn't thought into Unity from the start (or at least not when deciding when to show the top panel), and since bringing another application to focus while watching a full screen video when you only have a single monitor isn't possible, it isn't an issue - until one uses a dual monitor setup where this indeed is possible.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 748539, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.