desktop switching shows white screen
Submitted by Thomas Spura
Assigned to Olivier Fourdan @olivier
Description
When switching the desktop, especially notable between black/dark workspaces, there is always a white screen in between and then the new windows are drawn on top of it again.
Would it be possible to draw the new screen on top of the old one, without drawing a white screen in between?
Version: 4.10.0
Activity
Hello Thomas,
By switching workspaces the windows get unmapped/mapped, this is the cause of the "flickering". The windows need to be unmapped when they aren't on the current workspace.
Although I don't seem to understand what you mean with "white screen". What desktop application are you running, is it xfdesktop?
I don't think there is a "fix" for this. Right Olivier?
Regards, Mike
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Hi Mike,
(In reply to comment 1)
Although I don't seem to understand what you mean with "white screen".
A reproducer is:
- 2x2 grid of workspaces
- having a black Terminal in fullscreen mode on Workspace 1 & 3
- Fast switching between terminal 1&3 with: CTRL+ALT+UP and holding that.
What you see then is basicly a white screen, as it seems that when switching the desktops the old windows are unmapped, then a white screen is drawn, then the new ones are mapped. But I don't know where the white screen comes from.
What desktop application are you running, is it xfdesktop?
Yes
By switching workspaces the windows get unmapped/mapped, this is the cause of the "flickering". The windows need to be unmapped when they aren't on the current workspace.
Maybe it's possible to first map the new windows and then unmap the old ones, without having a completely clean (white) screen? (If that's the cause of the white screen.)
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(In reply to comment 3)
Hmm, when not having Terminal in fullscreen, the Terminal is redraws with a white screen like desribed before, but not the xfce4-panel so this might be a bug somewhere else than xfwm... Don't know where...
The panel is visible on all workspaces, and thus is never unmapped, this is also the case when you set a window to be visible on all workspaces. So yes, this side-effect is caused by the remapping. I can't help here more.
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This looks like the problem described here https://rogerkeays.com/xfce4-screen-flicker-switching-desktops-solved.
Also a similar problem exists when a background image is set. When my terminal window is maximized and I switch to another desktop with another maximized terminal window, xfce first draws the background image and after that redraws it with the maximized terminal window. This is very unpleasant for the eyes.
mentioned in issue #314
I've found that when switching workspaces, I always see a flicker (maybe just one frame) of my desktop background, or even windows from a third workspace.
I had always assumed that this was probably related to my Nvidia card, but I now have a new machine with Intel Xe graphics and see exactly the same symptoms, on a virtually unmodified Manjaro XFCE installation. This occurs with any method of switching workspaces. e.g. the default keybinding or
wmctrl -s.Does anyone not see this? It's my number one issue with XFCE, as it's a frustrating lack of polish in something I use almost every minute. So I'm surprised not to see more discussion here. It's not that noticeable with a dark background and mostly dark windows, which could be why others aren't noticing it.
To be fair, it is possible that it isn't exactly XFCE-specific. Every other DE I've used has some kind of animation when switching workspaces (like #126) which would partly mitigate the issue.
(I'm hoping this is one of those things that will just come out in the wash with Wayland support, but I don't know quite enough about it to be confident)
Edited by George ThomasOk, I've finally isolated this issue further. It only applies when one of the following is the case:
- a window on one of the workspaces is fullscreen
- "window manager tweaks -> accessibility -> hide title of windows when maximised" is enabled
- I used to always use this, which is why I was constantly seeing the problem
- one of the workspace contains a window from certain applications (I'll update this list as I find others affected):
- xfce-terminal (possibly related to #80?)
