notify-osd, Multimonitor - notify-osd in invisible area of dual screen setup

I have this problem too. My second monitor isn't that much smaller than my first so I can see the bottom of notifications. I've done a little searching and can't find any information on fixing this by changing a configuration file. As far as I can tell, notifications are completely unusable with this type of dual monitor setup.

Left monitor (primary): 1680x1050
Right monitor: 1440x900
I have a NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT set up to use TwinView

I'm having the same problem in 11.04 using an onboard Radeon HD 3200 with the proprietary drivers enabled, so it's not an nvidia-only problem. It's really annoying, notifications are completely unusable this way.

This is a problem that affects everyone with a dual-monitor setup, where the rightmost monitor is smaller than the leftmost, and the bottoms are aligned.

The solution is to check where the top of the rightmost monitor is, and put notifications below that.

I'm having the same problem. Notifications used to mostly just turn up on left hand monitor in Maverick, for me, but in Natty they are always in the invisible area, which does make them quite useless.

David, is your solution a suggestion to the devs, or is it meant for users, who are looking for a workaround? In case of the latter, would you mind pointing us to the right config file?

Nick, it's a suggestion to the devs, sorry. I do have a workaround though, you need to patch notify-osd [1], I tested and am running it on Maverick Meerkat:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:leolik/leolik
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
gconftool-2 -s /apps/notify-osd/gravity --type=int 3
pkill notify-osd

That gconftool-2 line sets the notifications to the bottom-right corner. Use a value other than 3 to set it to other corners, see the article for more info on that.

[1]: http://www.webupd8.org/2010/07/patched-notifyosd-updates-option-to.html

I encounter the same problem.

But there is certainly a solution: I use vertical panels, and they correctly detect the screen resolution as they do not expand outside the visible area. So, it is certainly possible to change the notify-osd code to request/compute the x,y coordinate of the NORTH_EAST corner.

A nice workaround is to set /apps/notify-osd/multihead_mode to "focus-follow". This doesn't work very well with Unity's panels though, because those panels aren't normal windows and can't be detected by notify-osd, so the notifications end up overlapping the panel. It's at least better than no notifications, though.

An appropriate solution to this entire top-right corner mess would be to use the _UNITY_NET_WORKAREA_REGION property with the networkarearegion extension in Compiz enabled, but this is Compiz-specific for the time being.

Some playing around with gdb tells me that in src/defaults.c, in defaults_get_top_corner(), the code used under Unity is the "no panel detetected; using workarea fallback" branch.

In my configuration (1280x1024 on the left, 1024x800 on the right, with bottoms aligned) the workarea rect is {x = 0, y = 24, width = 2560, height = 1000}, which results in the attached screenshot (for very long notifications).

Reproduced on Precise.

To verify the notices are offscreen rather than just missing, you can set the right display's top to be slightly offset lower than the left, then use volume or brightness keys to show the indicators. They'll appear clipped.

Still affecting precise, tested with unity 5.2.

Marius Gedminas (mgedmin) mentioned the function defaults_get_top_corner() on 2011-10-30 ... i managed to find a script that picks up the different monitors on a twinview setup .. would it not be possible to implement these .. i don't have time to but hopefully this script will help someone else.. The script is written python but calls normal GTK functions so it should be fairly easy to get the relevant information .. i don't think the function to find out the primary monitor is included though, but for now even getting the notifications to show up correctly on the right or left most monitor would be an improvement

This bug was fixed in the package notify-osd - 0.9.34-0ubuntu1

---------------
notify-osd (0.9.34-0ubuntu1) precise; urgency=low

  * New upstream release
    - Use _GNOME_BACKGROUND_REPRESENTATIVE_COLORS to better determine tinting
      for the notification background
    * notify-osd in invisible area of dual screen setup (LP: #716458)
 -- Ken VanDine <email address hidden> Fri, 23 Mar 2012 12:21:58 -0400

Confirmed that this is fixed :) would be cool if it showed up on the primary monitor though .. right now its on the right most monitor