My use case

When using Firefox, I move my mouse to the very top pixel of the screen to select a tab. See the screenshot below.

When using gaps, I cannot click at the very top of the screen to click a tab, since the window's hitbox is moved downward.

I was previously able to set the hint size to 1 and the gaps to 0, but this was removed in recent updates.
I also tried setting hint size to 0, but since cosmic doesn't have shadowed windows yet, it's hard to see which window is active.

My workaround for now is to manually edit ~/.config/cosmic/com.system76.CosmicTheme.Dark/v1/gaps to (0, 0).

Request

Allow setting the "Active window hint size" independently of "Gaps around tiled windows". The overlap isn't really an issue with small hint sizes.

Alternatives

1. Remove outer gap

   • Allow disabling the gap around the outside of the screen, while keeping the inner gaps.
   • [FR] Add setting for inner gaps and outer gaps #347

2. Pass through clicks

   • When the user clicks on an active window's hint/border, find the closest point inside the window and simulate a click there.
   • I think this would probably add too much complexity, and you'd need to handle other events like right clicks, drags, activate window on hover, etc.

3. [Feature Request] no gap with one window #551

   • Not a good solution for this since it wouldn't work with split screen.

Screenshot

To hopefully explain better, here is a screenshot with an exaggerated hint size: