Steam for Linux

Steam for Linux

Issue when running multiple windowed games
I'm on Pop OS 22.04 (based on Ubuntu ver 22.04).

When I run two windowed games at the same time it gets a little wonky, trying to alt tab into one game brings up the other game and vice versa. I'm someone who is bad at focusing so I tend to alt tab a lot to chat with friends even when playing a game.

The reason I'm sometimes running two games is because I like to have idle games running while I play more 'proper' games, I like to alt tab into the idle game to check up on it every now and then. This isn't causing any crashes or anything but it is very annoying, because trying to alt tab to discord and chat a bit then alt tab back into my game doesn't work and I need to minimize my idle game so I can get back into my proper game. Since I alt tab a lot this gets frustrating very quickly.

I know I can just quit the idle game when I run the actual game but I feel like I shouldn't NEED to do that.
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Showing 1-4 of 4 comments
no snd 10 Jul @ 9:51pm 
you could try utilizing workspaces. open the idle game on a different workspace, discord on another, your main game on yet another. and use the workspace hot-keys as alt-tab alternative
Last edited by no snd; 10 Jul @ 9:55pm
Setra 10 Jul @ 10:14pm 
Originally posted by no snd:
you could try utilizing workspaces. open the idle game on a different workspace, discord on another, your main game on yet another. and use the workspace hot-keys as alt-tab alternative

I'm very new to linux so I had to figure out how to to do this but after some googling this does work as a sort of hack solution, though it will take a bit of time to get used to. If anyone else has any other solutions to this I'd like to see them as well.
Yoth 11 Jul @ 2:56pm 
Sounds like some of your games are using Proton 9 or earlier. That version was a bit finicky when it comes to alt+tabbing. You can try to override your games to use Proton Hotfix but you might run into issues with the mouse breaking free from the game screen and the game losing focus every now and then when using a multiple monitor setup.
Last edited by Yoth; 11 Jul @ 2:57pm
Setra 16 Jul @ 6:19pm 
Originally posted by Yoth:
Sounds like some of your games are using Proton 9 or earlier. That version was a bit finicky when it comes to alt+tabbing. You can try to override your games to use Proton Hotfix but you might run into issues with the mouse breaking free from the game screen and the game losing focus every now and then when using a multiple monitor setup.
This didn't work so I didn't think much of it at the time, but just now when trying to fix an entirely different problem I switched some of my games to Proton Experimental rather than Hotfix and that seems to have fixed the issue, in case anyone else has the same issue and finds this topic.
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Showing 1-4 of 4 comments
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