Xfce Forum

advice1010

Member

Registered: 2023-02-19

Posts: 121

XFWM4 - Top left corner artifacts with certain applications

Debian based distro
XFCE 4.20
SSD (users using NVMe drive may not notice this due to increased launch speeds achieved)

Before I report, figured I would see if any users would be able to help me generate some more information about this.

When certain applications are launched, right before their main window opens, there are little box window artifacts that show up quickly in top left corner of screen.  These are not desired / do not look good / can be distracting to user.
Noticed that many times this is blamed for being due to window manager being used, so I was wondering if someone would be willing to help narrow down if XFWM4 has anything to do with these artifacts.

Lets use the media player based application known as "MPV"
I think this happened in previous versions as well, but at the moment I am using version 0.39.0
There is also a newer version out (0.40.0) but I do not have currently.

If you open up a video format file in floating window mode then no artifacts occur.
However if you set MPV application to launch in fullscreen mode by adding the --fs option to the command, then this artifact issue occurs.

For example if you are in Thunar and you hit "Enter" key on a media file (associated with MPV application) then you may notice in upper left corner there is a small square box (approx 1.5 inch x 1.5 inch in size) that flashes before the application/video is opened in fullscreen.
(Again users using an NVMe drive probably will not notice this due to its increased performance)

Does anyone know if this is due to XFWM4 or due to MPV itself?

In MPV case it is the fullscreen mode that generates this issue, but other applications I have seen this occur in are not launching in fullscreen mode, just maximized and this occurs as well.
I just learned of the following setting for MPV, I will try this out and see if this issue occurs when MPV launches maximized (instead of fullscreen).
--window-maximized=<yes|no>

Thank You

Last edited by advice1010 (2025-05-10 19:22:22)

advice1010

Member

Registered: 2023-02-19

Posts: 121

Re: XFWM4 - Top left corner artifacts with certain applications

I was able to try MPV in maximized mode and similar artifacts occur that are even stranger then fullscreen generated artifacts.

MAXIMIZED WINDOW MODE RESULTS
If I snap Thunar to right side of screen and then open a video file from it, in upper left corner of screen flashes a rectangle window that shows a clipped portion of THUNAR file pane, showing the list of files that that media file was run from (in the Thunar that is snapped to right side of screen).
Then the video file is opened in maximized MPV window as expected.

I do not know if any other users here are going to be interested in testing this specific issue out on this forum.  I think I am just going to mention to developers and see if any of them respond.

Thank You