Hiding Desktop Panel when Running Fullscreen Programs with Wine: A Workaround

Problem

If you run a fullscreen Windows application in Linux using wine, the desktop panel sometimes overlaps your application. You are then unable to see or click the part of the interface that is covered.

Note that this problem exists only when (in winecfg)

1. "Emulate a virtual desktop" (under Graphics tab) is disabled, and
2. "Allow the window manager to control the windows" (under Graphics tab) is enabled.

Workaround

I discover this one by accident. I personally think that it is less troublesome than others. Here it goes:

1. Run the application with wine;
2. Press Alt+F2 to bring up the Run Program pop-up window;
3. Press Esc to close the pop-up.

Your application should be on top now!

The workaround has been tested with

• Xfce 4.4.2
• Wine 1.1.0

If Alt+F2 is captured by the application and thus will not work, you can try this:

1. Make sure that the Task List is shown on the panel;
2. Run any program with a small window (e.g., 'About Xfce' (xfce4-about), mousepad, terminal.);
3. Run the Windows application with wine;
4. Click on the program on the Task List you have opened in Step 2 to bring up its window; (If Alt+Tab is not captured by the Windows application, you can use it too.)
5. Click the Windows application.

This workaround makes use of the following behavior: When a wine application is running in fullscreen mode, focus to another window and then focus to it back will make the wine application to be truly on top.

Other Workarounds

Several other workarounds are available. You can try them if the workaround above does not suit you.

* Auto-Hide the Panel

This is good if you also like to auto-hide your panel when you work on all things. Otherwise, it is troublesome to enable the auto-hide option before running wine and disable it afterward. Besides, the panel still pops up when your cursor is near to it.

* Remove Panel Prior to Running Wine

This is not graceful but it definitely works. In Xfce, commands for stopping and starting the panel are killall xfce4-panel and xfce4-panel respectively. In Gnome, they are gnome-session-remove gnome-panel and gnome-panel & respectively. It works because no panel is there! However you need to spend the trouble stopping and restarting the panel.

* Do Not Allow the Window Manager to Control the Windows

This is done by disabling the "Allow the window manager to control the windows" (under Graphics tab) option with winecfg. This makes all wine windows to be always on top, and sticky in every workspace! Furthermore, if this option and "Emulate a virtual desktop" are both disabled, I find that wine (at least for wine 1.1.0) application is then unable to accept any keyboard input! Same problem has also been reported by others.