Note: See update for GNOME 3.3/3.4 at the end of this post.
I’ve already expressed some disappointment in the default multi-monitor behavior in GNOME 3 on the dev’s blog (read: I posted an angry rant in the comments).
Basically, in GNOME 3, for some reason, they decided the typical use case was for the secondary monitor to stay fixed when switching workspaces, which is the complete wrong setup for someone using dual monitors.
Luckily, as Pascal points out in the blog’s comments, there’s a setting for this, and the other (ie correct) behavior is actually mutter’s default.
Luckily, the fix is pretty simple, and will allow workspaces to switch on multiple monitors again!
- Download gconf-editor – this is probably available in your distribution’s package manager.
- Start gconf-editor – the “Run Command” menu is still available in GNOME 3 by pressing Alt-F2.
- In the tree on the left, navigate to /desktop/gnome/shell/windows
- UNCHECK the box next to workspaces_only_on_primary
You’ll need to log out or restart to see the changes, and some commenters in the above post seem to note some small issues with the setup, but all-in-all this has been completely functional for me; and best of all, I can use both monitors again!
Update for GNOME 3.3/3.4
Cedric Briner emailed me to let me know that for GNOME 3.3/3.4, the command has been updated. The new command is (instead of gconf-editor):
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.overrides workspaces-only-on-primary false
Thanks for the info!
Wow, excellent. It was driving me nuts at work fighting with my IDE and VM constantly not being on the workspace I wanted them to be. Can’t thank you enough for this!
I had the same feeling like you. Default behaviour in Gnome3 for two displays was driving me crazy. I switched to Mate and Cinnamon because of this.
umm, is it bad if I don’t see any of those options in the list?
Strange default is P in da A. Thanks a lot for workaround!
I’ve got better – I see those, but after changing to off, nothing really changes at all, still only primary monitor has desktop and secondary only a wallpaper
Thanks for posting the workaround.
Is there a way I can also see the preview of the second monitor pressing Alt-F1?
Yes, thanks for this tip! This issue was driving me nuts too. Sometimes hard to know what keywords to search for, but I found your site and gconf-editor did the trick. Now on to figure out why my audio doesn’t work in FC-15 while it worked perfectly in 14 ..
Hi Greg,
Can you give more information about how exactly did you achieve this? When I uncheck the parameter, Gnome still sees my second monitor as an extension of primary workspace. Is there any other necessary setting on how to enable another workspace for the second monitor?
This is to restore the default behavior that existed in GNOME 2, which was basically a big workspace. If you want two different sets of workspaces, you’ll need to configure two X displays in your video card or X11.conf – note that some quick research seems to show reports of this crashing with GNOME 3, but I’m not sure if that’s been fixed.
Uhm, yeah. No. This use-case — dual screens (i.e. :0.0 and :0.1 such that each has their own workspaces and can be changed independent of the other) doesn’t actually work and is not even being considered important enough for anyone to fix.
Yet another reason why GNOME 3 is unusable.
~sigh~
I agree – I have four monitors and would love to be able to control them independently – it would be such a huge productivity helper.
I’d love one to be left static and then other three to be have multiple workspaces.
Gracias, Thanks
I actually LIKE the new screen mode!
I’ve been frantically trying to figure out how to make this work on prev Gnone.
It is actually strange for me how one can like it any other way.
I have one monitor with my code editor (Eclipse), and I use the other monitor for various random things (Web browser, various terminal windows, email, etc). I love it that I can switch workspaces on the “Misc stuff” monitor and keep my Eclipse with my code in front of me.
Likewise, I may have firefox open on one of the Monitors and then switch workspaces on the other without loosing my Firefox.
You can use dual monitors a LOT better then just pretending you have a huge monitor (which is also broken, because you have a huge ‘hole’ in hte middle).
You can accomplish this in previous iterations of GNOME by right clicking a window border and selecting “Always on Visible Workspace”
How about one step even better? Workspaces on each monitor that are independently switchable?
Sound good doesn’t it? Keep on wishing
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Thank you so much for this fix.
The default behavior has been driving me nuts since i started using the gnome 3 beta.
You made my day 🙂
Thank you,
that drove me insane!
anyway to fix window overview displaying all apps from various workspaces on the 2nd monitor?
I quite hate it when things come down to gconf-editor. It reminds me of Windows Registry and of all the stuff I hated Windows for and which made me to switch to Linux. Gnome3 now seems to be heading the “Windows” path …
I would prefer either nice GUI for that or simple old-style text configuration I can tweak.
End of Gnome3 bashing. 🙂
Very helpful, thanx. I do agree that the default desktop configuration is not good for dual monitors.
Infelizmente no meu eu não achei a pasta “/desktop/gnome/shell/windows” e continua a luta para fazer os dois monitores funcionarem adequadamente. 😀
(Editor: English: Unfortunately I did not think in my folder “/ desktop / gnome / shell / windows” and continues to struggle to do both monitors work properly.)
Well this is my issue, but it really does not totally fix it. I need to pin the open window to a workspace. They move when you right click the titlebar and move to another workspace. However, they do not stay on the workspace you move them to? I run a lot of open windows “tsclient” to virtual machines and I need to “pair” the windows to each other on workspaces across BOTH monitors.
Thanks
Thanks, a handy tip.
there is a bug to get this into gnome-tweak-tool, but they dont want to implement it until various bugs fixed with linked work spaces.
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=646912
there is also some discussion at https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/DesignerPlayground/MultipleMonitors
Hi,
I just updated my notebook, and now the fix is not working. Any ideas about that?
In gconf-editor the key workspaces_only_on_primay has the “This key has no schema”
Help please
Thanks
fast and cool solution. Thank you!
Hi, thanks for the tip, totally worked for me.
To Silvio, are you using Gconf-editor or Dconf-editor? Because with the dconf-edirot your will not be able to see the necessary keys.
Regards,
I notice that comments on the dev’s blog for the entry where the dev announces he “broke” multi-monitor support on purpose are disabled. Thanks for this info. I can’t tell you how irritated I was to discover when I upgraded to Linux Mint 12 (which uses Gnome 3) that my second monitor didn’t switch when I switched workspaces. Thanks again for helping restore sane functionality.
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Thanks for the info how to change it when necessary.
But I disagree with you: using multiple workspaces on the second monitor isn’t essential for users who prefer dual monitor settings. Even if I configured the second screen always with multiple workspaces in the past myself, I hardly used more than one on the second screen.
Having the second screen fixed now makes my system faster and I need less memory.
So, at the moment, I am really satisfied with this standard setting.
But thanks for showing anyhow. 🙂
Very helpful, great! I’ve linked it on my personal blog with your credits.
This is why I switched to KDE.
This how to works perfectly for me!!!! Tks a lot!!!
my brain knows where to look for things again! Thanks
Thank you _SO_ much. Just FYI, life isn’t any better in the land of KDE. Worse, actually. Anyway, thank you!!
Thanks a bunch, If it wasn’t for you I would have to go back to fluxbox! Which is not at all a bad alternative but since we are living in 2012 I figured I had to convert to something a little bit more modern.
Nice!
Do you know how to set the second monitor as a workspace but not a extended of primay monitor.
Regarding your update for Gnome 3.3/3.4, that setting can still be changed graphically by using dconf-editor instead.
Works great on Mint12. Thanks!
Thanks.
But there is no need to log out and in again, simply restart the gnome shell with Alt-F2, r, enter
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>> “Basically, in GNOME 3, for some reason, they decided the typical use case was for the secondary monitor to stay fixed when switching workspaces, which is the complete wrong setup for someone using dual monitors.”
Actually this is exactly the behaviour I want from my dual monitor setup. People have different needs, you see. But nice tutorial, though. I hate how gnome hides these settings from the actual settings center 🙁
Thanks!! I was going crazy about this.
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Anyone know if this is possible on Unity?
Thanks!
awesome post! thanks! was driving me nutz as well 🙂
Just an update for all following this thread, Using Gnome 3.4.0 and Configuration Editor 3.0.1 now does not have /desktop/gnome/shell/windows
use instead the dconf editor and drill down to /org/gnome/shell/overides and uncheck workspaces_only_on_primary there. Works like a charm.
DM
Dale Muhlethaler! Thanks for this one i was looking for shell also and it wasnt there. Thanks a lot
dconf-editor
/org/gnome/shell/overides and uncheck workspaces_only_on_primary there.
Note that this also works for Gnome version 3.6 on ubuntu.
thanks
J
I did not find “workspaces_only_on_primary” anywhere in gconf-editor. I found it in gnome-tweak-tool, “advanced settings”, under “shell”. There is also a “Dynamic workspaces” switch under “shell”.
Thanks mate, I was not able to fix it the way they proposed, gnome-tweak-tool command worked. But I had a workspace tab there already, no advanced, no shell etc…
hmm.. how about having independent workspaces on different screens? like you jump in between workspaces on each screen separately? does gnome have something like this? I think KDE does…
I actually like switching between the 2 options, so I created a keyboard shortcut to be able to do just that. Someone should really create an extension to do this. I might do it once I get some free time.
Here is the script I created to switch between turning the option on and off in gsettings.
http://pastebin.com/ZgRY8pFr
For my PC, I make this executable and create a keyboard shortcut to toggle it on and off. Enjoy! 🙂
I have to admit, I expected James’ comment to be an April Fool’s joke… but it’s not. Nice work and thanks for sharing. 😀
-thanks very much for the solution 🙂
// add info:
-execute command as a normal user NOT as a root!
Thanks, saved me a lot of trouble…
Fixed second screen is something I love about gnome shell, the only better thing for me would be independent workspaces for each screen. But there should be switch in settings center.
Anyway thanks for this post. My gnome-shell got broken and secondary screen started acting “correctly” thanks to you I fixed it.
Another thank you from the Interwebs! I was used to 5-6 workspaces with a single monitor, so when I added a second monitor, it feels like giving my displays a whole new dimension with workspaces active on both. Completely awesome.
I had written a script exactly like what James did, I loved your notify idea James!
I would add that you can simplify that script a bit… here is my version:
http://paste.fedoraproject.org/49999/29866731
thanks!!!!!
Thank you very much! 🙂
Thx a million Greg!! I really don’t like the default behaviour!!
Hi There,
I was glad to read about the comand
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.overrides workspaces-only-on-primary false
and went trough with it right away. Unfortunately it did not work. If I check the settings of dconf-Editor, the “workspaces-only-on-primary” tick is off, but it still does not work. Do I need to adjust any other settings?
I am using gnome 3, Debian testing.
PS: After adjusting settings in the dconf-Editor I did the following
-press alt+F2
-type r
-press enter
—> gnome 3 did restart- Workspace switching on the external monitor still does not work. ;( Any help is appreciated.
damn it, it was not the system but my stupidity for the window on my external screen was set to “always on visible workspace”
so it all worked acordingly.
Of course and thanks to my stupidity and the curse of Mr. Murphy I only realized that after I alreade posted the comment before, which I somehow can not delete.
Thx for the help in the first place
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.overrides workspaces-only-on-primary false
Still works on gnome 3.18
go to
Utilities —> tweak tool
click on shell deselect Workspaces only on primary monitor
should work instantly
Now (Gnome 3.14) the only way to affect the workspaces-only-on-primary setting is using tweak-tool. None of the other commands mentioned above make the blind bit of difference. My hatred for gnome maintainers grows apace.
@Chris DR Thanks for pointing out that tweak tool actually works. gsettings did nothing for me either and I was bummed.
Thank you! I almost uninstall Fedora to use Lubuntu. Just no time to play with configurations
Ftr: for me (Gnome 3.14) the category in `Tweak Tool` is called `Workspaces`.
Hey, do you guys are able to connect and disconnect the secondary display and works just fine?
I running ubuntu gnome 16.04 and it doesnt work. Once I boot the pc, it works but someone calls me to solve something and I take my note to his desk and we work a few then I return to my desk, plug on my monitor and “Blank” on the secondary display.
I ran the internet for some solution but found nothing.
Works for me now in the Tweak tool. Gnome 3 says gconf-editor is unavailable
Very nice! Thanks for the tip!
I also second Nik’s solution with the tweak tool:
Alt+F2 —> gnome-tweak-tool —> Workspaces —> turn off “Workspaces only on primary monitor”
Many thanks to Nik and Greg, that was annoying me for quite some time!
Thanks for the tip. The ‘gsettings’ command works on Debian 9. Too bad the workspace switcher only shows the primary monitor. I’ll be hunting for a fix fore that next.
@Chris DR thanks for your comment. tweak-tool : Workspaces -> Workspaces only on primary display. Turn off it, works like a charm
Awesome thanks! Command work for me on gnome 3.3 this behaviour should be default
I am not able to add bottom panel on second display. urgent help appreciated
In Gnome 3.26 the only way it worked for me was to use the command mentioned in the post. Using the tweak tool did nothing. As Linus Torvalds says in one of his interviews:
“In gnome3, the developers have apparently decided that it’s ‘too complicated’ to actually do real work on your desktop, and have decided to make it really annoying to do.”
The setting has been moved from gconf to dconf, so you can still change it without gnome-tweak-tool if you need to. If you open dconf-editor, the new path is:
/org/gnome/shell/overrides/workspaces-only-on-primary
You can also change it from the command line: `dconf write /org/gnome/shell/overrides/workspaces-only-on-primary “false” `
In GNOME 3.24 the dconf trick still works: set
/org/gnome/shell/overides and uncheck workspaces_only_on_primary true
With modern ultrabooks and external monitors the default setting seriously does make very little sense. The above tweak though saved my day. Thank you!
The built-in tweak tool that comes with Gnome contains this setting – just go to the tweak-tool, under workspaces there’s “Workspaces only on primary display”. The default is ON, but turn it off and it will do exactly what you expect on a dual-monitor display.
Yeeeey! This one finally worked out after trying all the above! Thanks a lot 🙂
Now it changes workspace on both monitors. How do I have independent workspaces per monitor?
Thanks for this amazing tip! 🙂
you saved the a*s of my OCD. thanks.
Fixed problem on Fedora 29.
Thanks mate !
Thank you so much it works !
the tweak works fine for the original issue.
but still, if you choose the option “Workspaces span displays”, the Activities (and the hot corner) on the secondary display shows windows on all workspaces, not only the current one as expected.
I know I’m probably going to get flamed into oblivion for this, but this is also the wrong way for this to work. MacOS has it right here, each viewport is its own workspace and can have its own set of workspaces that can be rotated independently.