Odd window coordinates tooltip appearing when I move any window

yutmlwxo · January 31, 2026, 9:14pm

After a fresh install of 4.3, I started noticing any time I drag or resize a window, there is a small tooltip that appears in the center of that window displaying its dimensions and position on the display, like this: (890x550) @ (26,778) This occurs in any qube, including dom0, so I know it’s not an issue with a template.

I found this issue mentioned on this forum post: Solved - [XFCE 4.20] Debug coordinates shown while moving windows | The FreeBSD Forums It says it is XFCE debug coordinates and might have been a debug flag set as an option during build.

Anyone know how to get rid of this? Screenshot below:

rustybird · February 1, 2026, 10:17pm

Choose your battles wisely, but if this really truly bothers you then use qubes-builderv2 to build a forked dom0 xfwm4 package without -DSHOW_POSITION:

github.com/QubesOS/qubes-desktop-linux-xfce4-xfwm4

xfwm4.spec.in

v4.18.0-2


      
          Provides:       firstboot(windowmanager) = xfwm4
          
          %description
          xfwm4 is a window manager compatible with GNOME, GNOME2, KDE2, KDE3 and Xfce.
          
          %prep
          %autosetup -p1
          
          
          %build
          export export CFLAGS="%{optflags} -DSHOW_POSITION"
          %configure --disable-static
          
          %make_build
          
          %install
          %make_install
          
          %find_lang %{name}
          
          for file in %{buildroot}/%{_datadir}/applications/*.desktop; do

yutmlwxo · February 2, 2026, 3:31am

Thank you. I’m not sure if that’s a task I’m up for right now. But I am curious if this is an intended feature or a bug. And if it’s intended, what purpose does it serve?

rustybird · February 2, 2026, 11:56am

It’s intentional. Qubes OS resynced the build instructions to the ones from Fedora upstream, where the tooltip was added a while ago by request:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1995645

https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/xfwm4/c/93595e80e1f947747a95637eacc5065a02c8401d

I guess some people like seeing the size and position of their windows

yutmlwxo · February 2, 2026, 10:07pm

Interesting. Well if it’s intentional, okay then. Would be nice if it was optional though.

unman · February 23, 2026, 2:16pm

When it was introduced (not clear how many asked for it), there was talk
of being able to turn it off. I think if that has been introduced it
is not yet in our version Xfce.

I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.