Xprop is not working on your system

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#1

I am a new-ish user, from macos. I know my way around a terminal but the linux file system and packages approach is still foreign to me.
I have been really happy with gnome 42, it is very intuitive to use.
The one thing about it that constantly bugs me are the useless and massive window titlebars.
Ok, so I think I can fix it: linux is customisable, hurray; gnome shell extensions are what I am looking for. There exist quite a few which make the gnome windows more palatable but many do not function on 42. I found one which does and has a feature set I would like: unite.
I install it, no problem. It installs and runs and works: EXCEPT for the very feature that removes the titlebars from windows. I reported it as an issue on github, the developer was available and responded but he pointed me to the problem being exactly as in the title: “xprop is not working on your system”.
As you can see he says (link below) the issue is with my Fedora system and xprop itself.
I do not know what xprop is, why it is a dependency of this gnome shell extension or why or in what way it is not working correctly. You can see the conversation with logs and tests here:
xprop claimed to be the problem: not working
Can anyone help me understand if indeed xprop is not working properly on my system and if so why not?
Fedora 36, Gnome 42.2, xprop 1.2.3

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#2

Hi @jakednix , welcome to the forums.

Could you check if you’re running X or Wayland? You can check this in the “about” bit of the system settings. It’s possible that xprop just doesn’t work on Wayland and so you need to switch to using X11 (you can do this from the login manager using the “gears” button that should pop up when you select your user there)

#3

thanks for the reply.
I am definitely using Wayland, not X11.
it’s strange that the gnome extension unite on it’s github repo mentions that wayland compatibility is there via css - maybe this means something I don’t understand.
I did research xprop and came into the whole wayland topic.
I guess being on wayland means xprop is irrelevant…?
I think i’ll ditch the gnome extension rather than changing from wayland… I want to stick with it.
This little attempt at customisation illustrates something that I’m still struggling with: in Linux I have to remind myself to ask, is this relevant for me, does this work for my system with these setting? This is often not trivial…
Now its back to the drawing board to find a way to get rid of gnome titlebars while using wayland…

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#4

Yeh, not sure. I found another extension that seems to do this, also using xprop etc:

may be worth a try, but I note that it hasn’t officially been marked to work with Gnome 41+:

#5

thanks for the suggestion.
even minor internet searching reveals that a lot of people have been trying to get rid of gnome titlebar decoration for a looong time.
I’m just going to live in fullscreen tmux for a while… this whole xorg/wayland thing has been very educational.

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