Because having a google account is against my religion, I post here a bug report. Sumbit it to the bug tracker if you want. The xmonad.hs showing the bug with comments: ######## import XMonad hiding (Tall) import XMonad.Layout.NoBorders import XMonad.Layout.HintedTile import XMonad.Hooks.ManageDocks -- open 2 terminals. focus on one. launch top inside. change layout twice -- focused window do not follow hints buggy = defaultConfig { manageHook = manageHook defaultConfig <+> manageDocks, layoutHook = avoidStruts . smartBorders $ tiled ||| Full } -- focused window will first not follow hints, and then follow. flashing = defaultConfig { layoutHook = smartBorders $ tiled ||| Full } -- normal behavior, distributing smartBorders workarround = defaultConfig { manageHook = manageHook defaultConfig <+> manageDocks, layoutHook = avoidStruts $ smartBorders tiled ||| smartBorders Full } main = xmonad buggy tiled = HintedTile 1 0.03 0.5 TopLeft Tall ######## I didn't find the explaination, but I suspect smartBorder saying to the layout that the focused window do not have border (because of the previous layout without border) and that HintedTile compute the size of the window as there is no border, and then smartBorders add the borders (resulting of a smaller window that do not follows hints). -- Guillaume Pinot http://www.irccyn.ec-nantes.fr/~pinot/ « Les grandes personnes ne comprennent jamais rien toutes seules, et c'est fatigant, pour les enfants, de toujours leur donner des explications... » -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince () ASCII ribbon campaign -- Against HTML e-mail /\ http://www.asciiribbon.org -- Against proprietary attachments