Big Picture opening in the monitor rather than the TV

[jvlppm]

I can't select in which monitor the Big Picture will open, and it always open on my left screen (monitor), moving the window with the Alt-Space shortcut makes it show on the TV but the image is cropped and not aligned.

It does not matter in which display the Steam is currently on, the Big Picture will always open on my monitor and not on my TV.

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Ubuntu 12.10 x64, updated. Steam updated. Monitor on the left, 1440x900. Sony 32" TV on the right, 1920x1080. Display settings: http://s8.postimage.org/43h1d6d85/Display_Setup.png

[LinAGKar]

Try changing your main screen.

[jvlppm]

@LinAGKar thats an option under windows, and thats not what I want. I want Big Picture to open on the bigger screen available by default. And to have an option to switch where it will open. I don't want to change my desktop environment and make all windows to open on the TV.

[DheathNone]

In my mind this problem is part of a bigger problem on Linux or at least on Ubuntu. Some programs e.g. Half life 1 (linux beta) and Firefox will always open on the left most monitor where as the correct behaviour would be to open fullscreen on the monitor where the parent program lies e.g. "mplayer -fs".

What I would like to know is why? I would like to push this bug upstream but I do not know what library is causing this bad default behaviour.

Is there already a bug open where this problem is talked more in depth?

Edit: After playing with the primary monitor setting (xrand) I can confirm that it will produce quite funny results: 1) Big picture mode opens on the primary monitor with the resolution of the left most monitor. As for me this means: 1920 x 1080 opens on a screen with 1050 x 1680. Yes, the monitor is rotated. This means that searching the quit button is quite hard as it is hidden "on the other screen". This problem might require a restart. 2) Half life 1 will still open on the left most screen but the resolution settings do not allow widescreen anymore.

[Spanguole]

Have a similar / same issue - I've got a dual-monitor setup and Steam always enters the BP mode on my secondary monitor. I noticed games like L4D2 allow selecting which monitor to go fullscreen on, so it would be great if this setting would be added to Steam for running in the BP mode, along with the resolution selection.

[zhukovpe]

Same issue here. Ubuntu 16.04, x64.

[tvollstaedt]

Same issue, please add an option within Steam to select on which monitor big picture & games start.

[KevinOberle]

Still an issue for me. Steam opens on secondary monitor. Games open on primary.

[chewi]

I gave up fighting this and wrote a wrapper script to switch the primary before starting Steam and then switch it back again. So many games are affected by this regardless of what Steam does so just fixing it in Steam isn't going to get you far. I think part of the problem lies in SDL but not all games use that either. It's very annoying that you cannot adjust the primary screen on a per-process basis with an environment variable as that would be ideal. I wonder if the situation is better under Wayland as I haven't switched yet but I doubt it.

[gustavomassa]

@chewi could you share your script? I'm facing the issue, I've tried everything, SDL settings and etc...

[chewi]

#!/bin/sh

MONITOR=DisplayPort-0
TV=HDMI-A-0

xrandr --output "${TV}" --primary --left-of "${MONITOR}" --auto
trap "xrandr --output '${MONITOR}' --primary --left-of '${TV}'" EXIT
"${@}"