Aqua Taskforce

Desktop icon grid becomes misaligned when using multiple monitors

Submitted by dmnd on October 7, 2008 to Aesthetics, Annoyance, Icons

Problem: Please refer to the attached picture.

I have a Macbook, which I use by itself and also connected to a large LCD monitor. In the attached picture, the top three icons (Leopard, Springboard and the dlls directory) are placed in the top right corner of my desktop. These icons were assigned their positions when my Macbook was not connected to an external monitor.

After connecting an external monitor, these icons appear in the top right of the external screen. This is fine, however, if a new icon needs to appear on the desktop it appears in the position of Worf in the attached picture. This is misaligned with the icons that were placed when no external monitor is connected.

My monitors are arranged as depicted in the lower left of the attached screenshot. I suspect that the 'main screen' (indicated by the menu bar in the arrangement picture) swapping from small Macbook screen to large external screen is causing these icons alignment issues. Or perhaps pixel coordinates start at the top left of the main screen, so their positions are relative to the left of screen. This may be a different multiple of icon width on differently sized screens.

Solution: Make pixel coordinates start from the top right of screen for the purposes of icon alignment. Or, align icons to the top left.

Severity: Low

Impact: Low

Status: Not fixed

Image: