Why is an orange glow over half my screen when no windows are even open?

Question

Came to computer, screen was locked, and orange glow (as though I had dragged a window to far left of screen, and it was showing me a preview of where it would snap to) was over left half of screen before I even logged back in, and I was on a clean desktop, with no windows open. It would not go away, and even after I unlocked screen, and it remained on desktop, and even in Expo view (covered whole left side of expo view - two desktops). Finally disappeared after second screen shot.

Screenshot

I've had this happening recently on my desktop, where I could work around it by trying to maximize another window by dragging to the screen edge. This is most likely something that should be filed as a bug. — Knowledge Cube, Oct 23 '11 at 07:04
This very clearly a bug. Such obvious bugs are better reported on the respective bug tracker (launchpad it that case) and not ask as a question here. — xubuntix, Oct 23 '11 at 08:57
What to do with questions that describe known bugs? this has been reported on Launchpad and as such is now closed. — Marco Ceppi, Jan 06 '12 at 13:38

8128 · Answer 1 · 2011-10-23T08:53:23.047

4

You are likely to be experiencing this bug that I recently reported: Bug #875557: Compiz grid plugin golden box appears after workspace switcher use. If so, please mark it as affecting you.

edited Oct 23 '11 at 08:53

answered Oct 23 '11 at 08:45

8128

28,740

Turns out this bug affects me too... I never noticed it because I always use the keyboard shortcuts to switch workspaces, and this seems to only happen when you use the workspace switcher from the Unity Launcher. @user27718, in the meantime, try to use the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+Alt-direction to switch workspaces and you shouldn't see the problem. – jat255 Oct 28 '11 at 21:15

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 28 '11 at 20:50

That looks like what happens when you drag a window all the way to the left to resize it in the screen grid.

Perhaps you could try settings in the Grid option in CompizConfig Settings Manager?

If you don't have it installed, do:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Start it up by running:

ccsm

Navigate to Window Management -> Grid.

You could either disable Grid entirely by unchecking the box on the left side,

Grid checkbox

Or you might try going to the "Appearance" tab and unchecking "Draw Indicator": Indicator checkbox

I'm not sure if that will work, but it might give you a workaround...

Hope it helps!

This may work until the bug is fixed: Set both the outline and fill colors to 0 opacity. You'll have a less-obvious visual indication of where your window will be, but this bug should cease to bother you. — Jackson Ray Hamilton, Aug 19 '13 at 01:06

Why is an orange glow over half my screen when no windows are even open?

2 Answers2