New to GNOME. I can’t distinguish the border between overlapping windows that have the same background color. Mostly the issue is with kitty terminal emulator windows, e.g., one window for zsh and another for Neovim.
Ubuntu 25.04
- Please provide the version you are using of
kitty, maybe by runningkitty --version? - Please provide version of GNOME from Settings > Ststen > About > System Details > GNOME Version.
- Please provide a screenshot because this issue is visual using PrtSc.
They are using Ubuntu 25.04, so they’re using 48. Version of Kitty isnt really important either, since the issue lies somewhere else. As for a screenshot, I don’t think it’s necessary? The issue is visual, but the only way to change anything is extension 
And that would also solve the problem, coz it would allow to more easily differentiate windows.
Thank you, @tragivictoria. “[E]xtension … would … solve the problem…” Could you elaborate a bit? I did search extensions.gnome.orgfor “windows” and “borders” but didn’t come up with anything that seems relevant.
Would you like the potential solution to be a drop shadow over the focused window, and that’s what is missing? Or Is it a one-pixel border at the left and right edges of the program? Drop shadow is on GNOME’s end, but I think that having a border around kitty would be the responsibility of that program, not GNOME. Correct me if I am mistaken.
EDIT: by misnomer “drop shadow”, what I actually mean may really be “window shadow” or “focus highlight”?
My preference would be a line border. However, kitty has no window setting for OS/GNOME windows; all of its “windows” settings, including border attributes, are for (what I’d call) panes or splits within the GNOME window. … I infer that a drop shadow would be my only GNOME-window choice? Am I so spoiled by macOS (he asks provocatively …).
I found a related discussion that may interest you. My apologies in advance; it is closed and some of the comments seem potentially inflammatory or contentious. 
“open a PR with code implementing libdecor integration and we can discuss,”
—Kovid Goyal, principal developer of calibre and kitty, 2021
Sorry if the issue is unrelated to your question. But it’s my belief that it seems related, and that this problem may be on kitty’s end, and not GNOME’s. It seems to me that kitty intentionally does not support or does not use the native GNOME windows. After installing it myself, I can see that the minimize, maximize, and close icons differ from GNOME’s native symbols. This implies an intentional avoidance of GNOME integration, or possibly just difficulties getting it working. Try:
- kitty in a desktop environment other than GNOME;
- a different terminal, such as tabby or wezterm on GNOME;
- elevating this issue to a kitty developer or discussion forum rather than GNOME developers and this forum.
- opening a PR with code implementing libdecor integration, whatever that means (I literally don’t know, I am new here)
EDIT: It is my understanding that kitty is not a GTK app. This may be related to its un-GNOME-like appearance. Correct me if I am wrong.
That’s farther in the Kitty weeds than I want to venture. I opened Librewriter and then opened a second window. Since the documents have the same white backgrounds, the same issue is potentially present. However, the document windows have a discernible border, which I think is a drop shadow border. These seem to be GNOME windows, which I infer from their being referenced in the pop-up menu on right-clicking the app’s icon in the dash. I don’t know whether it’d work with black backgrounds, which my kitty windows have, but I’d like to see.
Hi, I looked around and found this Rounded Window Corners Reborn - GNOME Shell Extensions. Can you check if this solves your problem?
Thanks – In Firefox, as soon as I turned on the extension on the extension’s page, FF’s window corners changed to rounded. But in Kitty, the windows are not affected.
You need to go to the extension’s settings to enable borders. Sorry for not being precisise with my wording.
Perfect – thanks very much!
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