Wow, people actually want that? I hate it with a passion whenever I use OS X, and honestly thought they just kept it for historical reasons and that no one actually likes it that way. Clearly I was wrong based on the reactions here.
I hate it because if you’re moving between two apps it adds a click or keystroke to select the app before you can select the menu, and if the app is not at the top of the screen you also have to move the mouse farther.
People who love this, what is the benefit? Is it just to save a few vertical pixels if you have two apps above each other, or is there more to it?
The “menu at the top of the screen” is just one possible visualization.
Essentially an application that supports this can “export” its menu so that it can be consumed by another process.
In the case of the “global menu” this is Plasma (applet).
However, the data can also be consumed for example by a window decoration plugin, like this one https://discuss.kde.org/t/decoration-with-locally-integrated-menu/29492
There are likely many more possibilities. Maybe a Kwin effect that shows the menu as a circle of options around the mouse cursor’s current position.
Okay, that’s making more sense. I can see people wanting to stick the menu in the title bar or something like that.
It’s great when you have a 15 inch 800x600 screen where every window is always maximised. Otherwise, not so much.
But even then, is there any benefit? For a maximized window, the menu will be in that general area anyway.
No, not really. The original idea was that you could just push the mouse up and get to the menu as it would be at the edge of the screen. It’s fine if you have a single program.
Current window managers, especially the Unix ones are specifically designed to let you juggle with dozens of windows. And the screen resolutions we now have make this more comfortable. Maximising every window like people did on a Mac+ no longer makes any sense. So the Apple style of interface makes no sense either.I think it’s like the people who are trying to turn Linux into Windows, a fear of the unfamiliar.
For Firefox I want that because FF’s menu is not visible by default and imo FF looks weird with menu enabled because its titlebar becomes thick. Global menu looks natural.
For those with vision impairments the options you need to set to
truein about:config are:widget.gtk.global-menu.enabledwidget.gtk.global-menu.wayland.enabledPresumably you would only need the second option if you are using Wayland. I tried it (am using Plasma on Fedora 42) and it worked but I’m not interested in it so I disabled it after I made sure all the menus gave a drop down. YMMV.
Thanks, I love you.
<3
Image from a reddit post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1l0yec5/global_menu_now_works_with_firefox/
Seems like you first have to go to about:config and toggle the option shown in the screenshot.
Hurrah I hope it’s global menu for every desktop environment.
Fucking finally!
What’s it supposed to do?
On MacOS and some desktop environments like Unity and optionally in Plasma, there’s a UX design pattern called the “Global Menu”. At the top of the screen, as part of the desktop’s shell, there’s buttons labelled File, Edit, View, etc for you to interact with.
Firefox is seemingly (I haven’t tested it myself, not using Plasma) enabled this functionality under Linux. Previously it required a patch to work. But this functionality has always existed on the MacOS version.
I tested it in Librewolf and Firefox and it works great! This doesn’t seem to work in Floorp, though that may be because I am using the community maintained chaotic-aur package.
