In the Applications view, clicking a workspace thumbnail also focuses windows
Affected version
- Fedora Silverblue 36
- GNOME Shell 42
- This issue appears in Wayland
Bug summary
The applications view includes a small set of workspace previews. Clicking one of these previews closes the overview and switches to that workspace, which is good. However, clicking a specific window in one of these previews causes that window to come into the foreground.
Steps to reproduce
- Open more than one window in a workspace and arrange them so they are both visible.
- Open the applications view in the overview.
- Notice the workspace thumbnail at the top of the applications view.
- Inside the workspace thumbnail, click the window that is not in focus.
What happened
After following these steps, the window that was not in focus is now in the foreground.
I believe this is a problem for a few reasons:
- There is no hover state for specific windows like there is in the windows view, which would indicate that specific windows are clickable.
- Windows in these workspace thumbnails are small targets with a wide range of sizes, which also does not suggest that they are interactive.
- When a user clicks a workspace, the shell immediately begins a zooming transition. It is disorienting when the final state is different than the original thumbnail, which happens if a different window (especially a large window!) is in focus at the end of the transition.
What did you expect to happen
Instead, clicking a workspace thumbnail in the applications view should only close the overview and show that workspace, and it should not affect the ordering of windows in that workspace.
Edited by Dylan McCall