Trigger overview every time when the desktop is the only running application (all windows are closed)
Feature summary
With GNOME Shell 40, the overview is triggered on every start. This itself is awesome for productivity and also usability. For example my mother now is able to start right away after login instead of waiting a random amount of time, because she thinks that the PC isn't ready yet.
The one missing part it that I believe the overview should be triggered all the time after the user closes every window on the workspace. I don't see any reason that the user should stay on the blank, useless workspace where the user needs to press SUPER (or touch the edge) to trigger the overview by themself. Since the top-bar is reachable while in overview there also should be all the features reachable that are available on the bare desktop.
I came to this conclusion while watching my mother, where she still waits for some "action" to happen after closing the Firefox windows (she only uses the browser) until she realize that she now needs to press SUPER again to do something.
How would you like it to work
If all windows are closed on this workspace (virtual-desktop) it should go to overview mode by themself. open windows on other workspaces should be ignored, because they will also be reachable from the overview again. So if the user is on workspace 1 and closes the only window on workspace one, it should go to overview regardless if there is an open window on workspace 2 or not.
However if there is an open windows on display/monitor 2 it should NOT go to overview.
This only applies to closed windows, minimized windows will not trigger this action. In background running applications will of course trigger the action, because they to not have an open window on this desktop.
Possible downsides and possible solutions
- It could become visually exhausting if the overview is triggered right after the last app-window closes
- This could be prevented by a little "cool-down" time after close of the app-window and triggering of overview
- Heavy users of keyboard shortcuts may feel interrupted by the auto trigger.
- Also for this a little cool-down could help. In this time a keyboard user should be able to switch to another workspace and call the app that is wanted on it's own without waiting for the auto trigger.
needs design
- Unknown behavior if a user switches to an empty workspace
- In my opinion it wouldn't feel natural to auto-trigger the overview in that case. On the other hand it's very likely that the user will open the overview here by themself anyway.