activities bar and title bar on the wrong display

**carusoswi** · February 14th, 2020

Running 19.10 on an Asus G74SX with a second monitor attached via the VGA port. Works fine in Windows, but in Ubuntu, the activities bar and title bar on on the second moniotr. I've tried going into display settings and sliding the icons around. This changes how Ubuntu thinks my monitors are arranged on my desk (stacked one on top of the other, one on the right, one on the left, etc.), but the system still treats monitor 2 as monitor 1 with regard to the Activities bar (if that is what it's called - the bar at left that contains your favorites icons) and the title bar at the top.

This is a small issue, really, but still annoying and I would like to fix it.

Advice most welcome.

Caruso

**CatKiller** · February 14th, 2020

What you're looking for is to set the monitor you're interested in as the primary monitor. By default, that's the first one that the system discovers at boot (screen 0), but it's configurable. In KDE that's simply part of the monitor settings, but I don't know how Gnome handles it.

**deadflowr** · February 14th, 2020

If using the Join Displays setting then a setting to set the Primary display in under the display setting window (the window you can move the displays around in.)

**carusoswi** · February 17th, 2020

I appreciate the replies, but the suggestions are not working for me. This never used to be a problem. I do not know what has changed.
Caruso

**vanadium** · February 17th, 2020

In standard Ubuntu, go to Settings, Displays. With the "Join Displays" active (i.e. different content on the two screens), change the "Primary Display" setting to the monitor where you want the Gnome Shell controls to appear.

**carusoswi** · February 20th, 2020

I have it set this way. On my system, display 1 is described as built-in display (my laptop's screen), and is set as the Primary Display. Display 2 is described as Samsung 19" . . . (that's my VGA monitor). This all appears to be correct, except that the "controls" are displaying on Display 2, not Display 1.

So, something is not working correctly.

Thanks for your reply.

Caruso

**carusoswi** · April 18th, 2020

Still looking to solve this annoying little issue. Is there anyone with additional suggestions. My displays look right on the Join Dispays screen, but the controls continue to appear on Monitor 2.

Any help appreciated.

Caruso