Window appears off screen on ubuntu [closed]

Asked 18/9, 2012 at 12:52 Answered 25/5, 2015 at 19:43

Solved linux ubuntu ubuntu-12.04 multiple-monitors

294

I have a dual monitor setup, and I am using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS I have changed the positioning of the monitors several times, and now for some reason some of the windows open up off-screen (outside of both screens), Update Manager, for instance. How can I position the windows on one of my screens?

Teniacide answered 18/9, 2012 at 12:52 Comment(7)

Still a problem with 14.04 – Anele 25/9, 2015 at 20:6

Mine is easier: Alt + Spacebar And then use left or right arrow to move them back :)) – Ungracious 15/3, 2016 at 14:57

Still happens with Ubuntu 16.04. – Shah 19/6, 2017 at 0:26

This would be very on-topic on askubuntu. Surprised I found it here instead of there. – Stores 20/2, 2018 at 22:9

still a problem with 19.04, in 2019 :-[ – Abutment 11/6, 2019 at 4:49

still a problem with 21.10 – Atone 23/12, 2021 at 14:21

I cannot fix it. None of these works for me. – Burg 20/9, 2023 at 23:38

547

You can get the window back on your screen by using

ALT + spacebar

This would show you the maximize/minimize/ ... options. Click maximize and it would occupy your screen.

You can also hit "move" and then either your mouse or arrow keys to move the window to your current window.

Manchineel answered 9/11, 2012 at 7:33 Comment(13)

instead of maximize you can use move and then move it with the mouse ;) – Renae 29/6, 2015 at 8:1

ubuntu updater offscreen and alt-space only shows "always on top" (wonder if this is some messing of dual monitors) – Anaphora 19/11, 2015 at 9:26

You can also maximize and then drag into your screen. – Murr 11/8, 2016 at 15:27

Quicker way I found after fighting with off-screen widnows (for Ubuntu 16.04): go to Appearance, Behavior, and then check / uncheck Enable workspaces. All windows magically appear! – Thankful 8/11, 2016 at 15:16

this is a weird bug. I once moved my window out of the monitor with this option and than any window opened up on the exact last position of that window. Using this shortcut helped me to fix this issue so windows would open up on-screen again. – Tso 11/5, 2017 at 15:5

Alt + Right mouse button works for me instead of spacebar – Nelia 20/9, 2017 at 9:33

This answer prevented me having a nervous breakdown. Thanks. – Hammerskjold 8/10, 2017 at 1:9

This made my day too. I have a 4K monitor that is acting up, occasionally it fails to wake up from sleep mode unless I switch to a lower resolution and back. But when I do this I lose windows off-screen. – Devilry 28/12, 2017 at 6:19

To activate Move function when window is off screen, highlight window in taskbar, hit Alt-Space, then hit the m key. Now your window can be moved on-screen with mouse or arrows. Thanks to: blog.vogella.com/2013/06/02/… – Wainscoting 31/12, 2017 at 5:33

18.04 still has this bug – Biographical 19/11, 2019 at 23:1

In my case, I cannot move the popup window because the top bar was unreachable and the resizable was done on the bottom. Luckily I have two screen and sending it to the other screen fix the issue. Voila! – Kelly 24/9, 2021 at 14:15

Nope, ALT-space doesn't seem to do anything on 20.04. – Braud 3/12, 2021 at 11:37

Once every 2 months i need to move an off-screen window and i always forget ALT-F7. For the first time I looked at the second answer, and I feel I might remember ALT-SPACE. Thanks! – Streamline 2/11, 2023 at 3:52

192

Be sure to have the off-screen window selected (use Alt-Tab or Super-W for example). Then hold Alt+F7 and move the window with the cursor keys until it appears in the viewport.

When this happens to me the hidden window is usually below the screen (I occasionally use two screens with one on top of the other, a setup that agrees well with a laptop on a desk). If you use Super-W to select the window, you can guess where it is by looking at the animations. Holding Alt+F7+Up brings the window into view for me.

Restivo answered 18/2, 2014 at 18:17 Comment(10)

Actually, even nice in as much as you don't even have to deal with a menu :) – Transact 15/4, 2014 at 4:57

One of the menus for the Ubuntu upgrade menu to Xenial Xerus (why can't they use words I can remember / spell?) is too tall for my screen, and resize is disabled. This let me move the menu up and off the screen (normal methods didn't work) so that I could click "upgrade". – Abele 30/7, 2016 at 19:51

You don't need to hold Alt+F7, just press it. And you can move it not only with you cursor keys, but also with a mouse :) – Phototypy 24/5, 2017 at 17:54

on ubuntu 18, the popup can never be focus if its a file opener / picker – Hedges 29/5, 2018 at 17:29

@JamesTan, wouldn't you be able to focus the window that sparked the opener/picker? Moving that into focus should do the trick? Unfortunately, I can't test it ritght now... – Restivo 7/6, 2018 at 11:7

hi @GeorgJung , it is focused, but it is totally off screen. i tried short cut keyboard to move the window, but it does not work. – Hedges 8/6, 2018 at 18:11

Hi @JamesTan, Ubuntu 18 has dumped Unity and switched to Gnome. I never had the problem with Gnome so far... what is your setup? – Restivo 9/6, 2018 at 21:57

Hi @GeorgJung fresh install of 18.04, only chrome have this problem – Hedges 20/6, 2018 at 16:39

works on ubuntu 18 with unity desktop, unlike the accepted answer – Lubumbashi 25/10, 2018 at 11:15

This doesn't seem to work on applications that don't play nice with the window manager, like steam. 18.04 kde plasma – Whittaker 24/11, 2018 at 9:39

I made a little script to fix a similiar bug I have in ubuntu 15.04 with two screens: https://github.com/mezga0153/offscreen-window-restore

The script makes use of the wmctrl command line tool to find the offscreen windows and then uses wmctrl to place each one back into a visible area.

Roveover answered 25/5, 2015 at 19:43 Comment(5)

Avoid posting link-only answers; please edit the post and include the code – Pyroxene 25/5, 2015 at 19:50

great job with the script, works well with 16.04 as well and much better than having to fix all the windows one-by-one manually using the shortcut keys. – Kappenne 4/7, 2016 at 3:41

Under 17.04, it caused my machine to reboot. – Woodsman 4/10, 2017 at 18:14

It did move window back to viewing area but It closed my other open windows as well. – Quicktempered 31/1, 2018 at 14:36

Not working on 2018.04! Instead of moving off-window objects into the monitor, it enlarged one desktop to the size of both monitors, crashed unity, forcefully logged me out, closing all my programs in the process (including an unsaved inkscape drawing I couldn't save because it was off-screen) and after logging in, left me with a broken session requiring a reboot to fix. – Ault 9/10, 2020 at 19:31

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