[Bug] MSEdge popups/tooltips broken

[jbaribeault]

Environment

OS	Pop!_OS 24.04 (Cosmic)
cosmic-comp	0.1177618137724.04~4df9519
Browser	Microsoft Edge 147.0.3912.72 (native Wayland, --ozone-platform=wayland)
Session	Wayland

Description

Edge creates tooltip surfaces as xdg_toplevel with no set_parent call, no app_id, and no title. cosmic-comp correctly treats these as independent top-level windows, causing them to appear behind the main Edge window rather than on top of it. The tooltip surface also briefly steals keyboard focus from the main window.

This is a client-side bug in Edge/Chromium's Wayland backend — tooltips should be xdg_popup surfaces with a grab and a parent, not parentless toplevels. However, other compositors (KWin, Mutter) silently accommodate this misbehaviour. A compositor-side heuristic to stack anonymous short-lived toplevels above their client's other surfaces would resolve the symptom while the upstream Chromium fix makes its way through.

Related: #886 (Chromium context menus behind dialogs — same root cause)

Steps to reproduce

1. Launch Microsoft Edge under native Wayland (--ozone-platform=wayland)
2. Hover over any toolbar button or link to trigger a tooltip
3. Observe tooltip appears behind the main window briefly, or not at all

Expected behaviour

Tooltip appears above the main Edge window.

Actual behaviour

Tooltip is z-ordered as a peer of the main window (or behind it). It also briefly steals keyboard focus (wl_keyboard.leave fires on the main surface, wl_keyboard.enter fires on the tooltip surface).

WAYLAND_DEBUG trace (tooltip surface lifecycle)

 -> xdg_surface#92.get_toplevel(new id xdg_toplevel#80)
 -> zxdg_decoration_manager_v1#15.get_toplevel_decoration(new id zxdg_toplevel_decoration_v1#65, xdg_toplevel#80)
 -> xdg_toplevel#80.set_app_id("")
 -> xdg_toplevel#80.set_title("")
 -> xdg_toplevel#80.set_min_size(1, 1)
 -> xdg_toplevel#80.set_max_size(0, 0)
 -> zxdg_toplevel_decoration_v1#65.set_mode(1)
    [compositor assigns 88x31]
 -> zxdg_toplevel_decoration_v1#65.destroy()
 -> xdg_toplevel#80.destroy()
    [wl_keyboard.leave on main surface, wl_keyboard.enter on tooltip surface]
    [xdg_toplevel#51 (main window) reconfigured after tooltip destroyed]

set_parent is never called. Empty app_id, empty title, 1×1 minimum size, 88×31 actual size, ~20ms lifetime. No Edge/Chromium launch flags alter this behaviour.

Suggested compositor workaround

Heuristic: if an xdg_toplevel from the same client has empty app_id + empty title + small dimensions + no set_parent, stack it above all other toplevels from that client. This matches the implicit behaviour of KWin and Mutter for broken Chromium clients.

[jbaribeault]

I've investigated this further with Claude Code and together produced a compositor-side workaround patch that fixes the issue for Microsoft Edge, Chromium, and likely other Chromium-based browsers.

Root cause

Confirmed via WAYLAND_DEBUG=1 tracing that Chromium creates tooltip and transient popup surfaces as parentless xdg_toplevel surfaces with empty app_id, empty title, and no set_parent call — rather than xdg_popup surfaces as the protocol requires. cosmic-comp correctly treats these as independent top-level windows, causing them to appear behind their parent window. They also briefly steal keyboard focus, which in Edge causes immediate surface destruction (the "flash and disappear" symptom). Without further handling they also register as independent windows in the dock.

Patch approach

An is_anonymous_toplevel() heuristic detects these surfaces: empty app_id + empty title + no parent + size ≤ 600px. Three files are changed to handle them correctly:

• src/shell/layout/mod.rs — is_anonymous_toplevel() heuristic definition; is_dialog() uses it to route these surfaces to the floating layer rather than tiling.
• src/shell/focus/mod.rs — extends raise_with_children() to raise anonymous toplevels above other windows from the same Wayland client, since they have no set_parent for the existing parent-walk logic.
• src/shell/mod.rs — four changes in map_window():
  1. Skips toplevel_info registration so anonymous toplevels do not appear in the dock or taskbar.
  2. Suppresses keyboard focus so Edge does not destroy the surface on unexpected focus steal.
  3. Bypasses map_internal() entirely to avoid sending a second configure() that also triggers surface destruction.
  4. Places the surface at cursor position + standard tooltip offset (8px right, 20px down).

Testing

Tested on Pop!_OS 24.04, cosmic-comp 0.1~1776181377~24.04~4df9519, NVIDIA 4090, driver 580.126.18.

Fixed: Microsoft Edge 147.0.3912.72 — Outlook PWA tooltips, meeting popups, people cards, account switcher all working correctly.

Fixed: Chromium 134 (snap) — bookmark folder tooltip and right-click context menu (the exact repro from #886) both working correctly.

No regressions: Firefox, Slack, VS Code, native Wayland apps — dock entries, tooltips, and popups all unaffected.

Patch attached. Happy to iterate on the approach if the heuristic needs tightening or the positioning logic needs adjustment.

chromium-tooltip-toplevel.patch

[jbaribeault]

Update: Google Chrome 147 running native Wayland does not exhibit this issue — tooltips produce no xdg_toplevel surfaces at all, suggesting Google has a Chrome-specific fix that hasn't been upstreamed to Chromium or backported by Microsoft into Edge. The compositor-side workaround remains necessary for Edge, open Chromium builds, and any Electron app built on the open Chromium codebase.

[isorropisths]

Is there a way to fix this, leaving the cursor for 1 second on Downloads or History pane, makes them disappear because of this. GNOME 49.

[KyleSanderson]

@Drakulix is there another way to resolve this without changing to kwin? Outside of the freezing issue after standby, Cosmic is quite stable before sleep outside of this brutal issue on Edge.

[KyleSanderson]

No regressions: Firefox, Slack, VS Code, native Wayland apps — dock entries, tooltips, and popups all unaffected.

Patch attached. Happy to iterate on the approach if the heuristic needs tightening or the positioning logic needs adjustment.

chromium-tooltip-toplevel.patch

Seeing the same thing here after running this for a week now - works perfectly. Thank you very much for sharing it.

[automaton82]

I have this same problem in Pop OS with Edge it's super annoying, is there an ETA on a fix?

As a note I fixed it locally by creating file ~/.var/app/com.microsoft.Edge/config/edge-flags.conf and putting --ozone-platform=x11 in it (I use flatpak).

[KyleSanderson]

just switch to sway and throw this in your config. It's a shame that system76 doesn't take cosmic seriously (with the hard stalls on wakeup, rampant memory leaks and similar).

@jackpot51

  environment.etc."sway/config.d/90-chromium-tooltip-workaround.conf".text = ''
    # Chromium/Electron tooltip workaround:
    # some native Wayland tooltip/transient surfaces show up as anonymous
    # xdg_toplevels, so approximate popup behavior with Sway criteria.
    no_focus [shell="xdg_shell" app_id="^$" title="^$"]
    for_window [shell="xdg_shell" app_id="^$" title="^$"] floating enable, border none
  '';

[grahamperrin]

Observation

On Kubuntu 26.04 with Wayland:

• reproducible with microsoft-edge-stable 151.0.4129.86-1
• not reproducible with microsoft-edge-beta 152.0.4191.19-1

Worked around for microsoft-edge-stable

I used KDE Menu Editor to change the Command-line arguments value for /opt/microsoft/msedge/microsoft-edge:

• from %U
• to --ozone-platform=x11 %U

Tested

https://duckduckgo.com/, which normally presents a tooltip (what I previously thought of as a popover or hint) for the Search privately field:

Please fill in this field.

I chose DuckDuckGo because it's demonstrated in an unlisted video on YouTube, which is publicly linked from:

• [Linux] Tooltips from Edge on Wayland create a separate window which is destroyed immediately - Microsoft Q&A

Side notes

Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 (medium) found this issue, and the Microsoft Q&A page above. Claude also helped with my misunderstanding of how to use KDE Menu Editor (I had similar difficulties in the past).