How to make chrome truly full screen in lubuntu

Question

When I press F11 to go fullscreen in Chrome in Lubuntu, the LXPanel taskbar at the bottom disappears, yet all the menus, tabs, and the search bar all still visible, as if Chrome is in windowed mode. How do I get Chrome to truly go fullscreen as is possible in Windows and OSX?

Solution 1

ianorlin's answer is on-point, but I had a lot of trouble understanding what they were saying. Not feeling comfortable with Edit-by-Rewrite, I am posting my own answer.

The problem is that Openbox, the Lubuntu window manager, sees you press F11 before Chrome does. Openbox then performs its own fullscreen process and never informs Chrome about it.

The fix, then, is to either change Openbox's fullscreen key or to change Chrome's (to something Openbox isn't using).

The file ~/.config/openbox/lubuntu-rc.xml contains Openbox's keyboard configuration information. You may wish to make a back-up of it prior to changing things since you don't want to mess it up.

Look for the stanza that says:

<keybind key="F11">
  <action name="ToggleFullscreen"/>
</keybind>

It may be inline with the rest of the file, like so:

</keybind><keybind key="C-Escape"><action name="Execute"><command>lxpanelctl menu</command></action></keybind><keybind key="F11"><action name="ToggleFullscreen"/></keybind><!-- Launch Task Manager with Ctrl+Alt+Del --><keybind key="A-C-Delete">

But you can break it out onto its own lines to make it more visible.

Once you've made the changes described below use

openbox --reconfigure

to activate/test them.

Now, change the stanza mentioned above to read:

<keybind key="W-F11">
  <action name="ToggleFullscreen"/>
</keybind>

This will make the Windows/Super key into a modifier, so you press Windows+F11. I like this one because (probably) nothing is going to be using that key combo, whereas Shift+F11 and F11 are both used at the application level.

If you did want Shift+F11 to be your fullscreen key, you'd use:

<keybind key="S-F11">
  <action name="ToggleFullscreen"/>
</keybind>

More information about what actions you can perform using this config file is available here.

Solution 2

Actually for lubuntu what is happening is openbox is seeing the f11 makes openbox the window manager behind lxde make the window fullscreen as you describe. However, you may need to change it to another key to still be able to change the key many keyboard shortcuts are listed in https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Lubuntu/Keyboard To do this you will need to edit ~/.config/openbox/lubuntu-rc.xml but it is a good idea to make a backup copy of this file as errors can end up with breaking window managment.

<keybind key="S-F11">
  <action name="ToggleFullscreen"/>
</keybind>

To bind shift plus F11 to make normal apps for fullscreen. Then to have the openbox window manager in the background and run the command openbox --reconfigure. To apply the new keyboard shortcut.

Comments

[user3113723]

Possibly helpful contrast: In my WM (notion), WinKey+f is bound to make-the-current-window-fullscreen, and F11 is unbound. If I focus a chrome window and press WinKey+f, I get fullscreen with tabs and location bar like you describe. If I press F11, I get "true" fullscreen.

[Marco Sulla]

F11 is already ToggleFullscreen on Lubuntu 14.04. I tried anyway to add your entry for Shift+F11, but it does not work.

[ianorlin]

Yes that is better written than my answer.