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Handsome Jack
Asked: 2017-10-24 09:01:43 +0800 CST

17.10 How to disable window-to-window snapping while having edge snapping enabled

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I'm a web software developer, I usually have browser window and editor open, each occupy 80% of space from left and right sides. The reason - so I can switch back and forth with one click of a mouse - much faster than Alt+Tab or any overviews, then point and click. When doing it 500 times a day, it helping to save ~40 minutes. So usually my layout looks like this:

enter image description here

In unity I could just snap and resize - 2 seconds and my setup is done, I can do that still in 17.10 by manually positioning each window and resizing each corner to specific location - 30-50 seconds. If I just snap windows in 17.10 it looks like this:

enter image description here

I.e. either browser either editor will be nonfunctionaly small

What's worse - if I snap 2 windows - both windows are treated as single window - if after I snap them I want to have editor on right side and terminal on the left - no luck - if I raise editor it'll be risen with browser putting terminal in background. So in addition to constant resizing I'll need to do additional mouse movements and clicks to just open terminal or constantly unsnap windows when I need terminal.

I want to highlight that what's needed not to disable snapping altogether (and do 40-50s positioning routine each time manually) but just to disable window-to-window snapping leaving edge snapping intact

Windows 10 has such setting and I'm looking for a way to do the same in Ubuntu 17.10:

enter image description here

gnome

2 Answers

  1. Not enough rep to post a comment, so unfortunately I'll write it in here. Be gentle...

    Temporary workaround - if you snap the second window to the same side as the 80% one, then back to the other side it will be independently resizable.

    Step 1 resize a left-snapped window (chrome) to desired width: step1

    Step 2 snap right window (terminal) to the left, over top of the other one: step2

    Step 3 snap back to the right. You can see the overlap and window separation: step3

    You can now resize the right window to 80%.

    This is a terrible workaround, I just upgraded from 17.04 this morning and I really don't want to have to go back down, but this is just unacceptable. I usually run a 4-split for web dev on a large tv, so im still trying to work out how to survive in a world without corner snapping...

    Hope this helps.

    EDIT: disable window-to window snapping with 

    dconf write /org/gnome/mutter/edge-tiling false

    and 

    dconf write /org/gnome/shell/overrides/edge-tiling false

    I'm also using another window snapping extension (put windows) while disabling the default keybinds (not sure if that is important though)

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  2. I kept finding edge-tiling, but the setting i was looking for is well hidden:

    Install Compiz (CCSM), then

    CCSM -> Window Management -> Resize Window -> General -> Uncheck Maximize Vertically if Screen edge hit

    Found here

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