GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 769098
Fullscreen windows are raised to front when they don't have focus
Last modified: 2016-07-22 22:56:23 UTC
Using mutter 3.20.3 on Fedora 24. Steps: 1. Open app A on monitor 1 (e.g. nautilus). 2. Open fullscreen app B on monitor 2 (e.g. Remmina, gnome-terminal). 3. Open non-fullscreen app C on monitor 2 and place over fullscreen window. Everything is fine at this point. 4. Switch focus back to app A on monitor 1. At this point, B has risen to front and C is no longer visible. I expect that C should remain visible on top of B. I usually use fullscreen because it simplifies/improves the UI of a particular program - e.g. in a Remmina session I want to see the full screen of the remote computer without scaling or cropping. It's very useful to me to have a fullscreen window be in the background of everything else. In general, the stacking priority of a fullscreen window seems to be too high. In the previous example, it's also impossible to drag app A above app C. You can drag it onto monitor 2 and it retains focus, but it's not visible until you move focus to B and then back to A. (Then once A is above B, you can drag it back and forth between monitors and it will stay on top - the rules are inconsistent/unexpected.)
Thanks for taking the time to report this. This particular bug has already been reported into our bug tracking system, but please feel free to report any further bugs you find. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 768221 ***
I did find that bug but it wasn't clear it was the same symptoms. Glad to hear it's been fixed. Thanks!