Should GNOME center new windows by default or not?

There is an ongoing discussion in Ubuntu, in GNOME upstream and several times in the stack exchange network whether new windows should be centered by default in GNOME.

Now I also heard if it does not center them automatically, GNOME (at least in Ubuntu) may try to place the windows so they don’t overlap somehow. This was totally new to me and I do not see nor have ever seen that in practice. When the setting is disabled, it just places windows at 0,0. (But maybe this is a new feature in GNOME 3.32? Or just some addition by Ubuntu?)

So anywhere, here is a poll:

I think that new windows should open:

  • Centred. Neat and predictable but each new window covers the last one.
  • Placed automatically. Less predictable but each new window is least likely to overlap any others.

0 voters

You can change this setting in gnome-tweaks:

IMO regardless of the poll results, Fedora should stick with the upstream default just like with most other stuff.

Realistically, I’d argue that if you’re using an ideal GNOME workflow (most particularly heavy use of workspaces to replace minimize), you won’t really need windows to be centered anyway.

1 Like

I totally agree!

However, as indicated already, upstream has this discussion, too…
So obviously, this here could influence their decision.

See: