This problem was bugging me since switching to Gnome around December, but I’ve finally figured it out. Maybe somebody will benefit from this.
The issues
- dragging columns in KeePassXC would make the entire desktop choppy
- playback in Shotcut would make the entire desktop freeze for a couple seconds at a time
- interacting with trey icons that appear thanks to the “AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support” extensions could freeze for a couple of seconds or indefinitely (had to restart gnome with
killall -HUP gnome-shell) - dragging the crop area in Pix was choppy
Root cause
It was because of the “accessibility toolkit” that I had enabled to get the desktop magnifier. Disabling accessibility toolkit makes the problems go away.
Solution
If you have the “screen magnifier” enabled (gsettings set gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.a11y.applications screen-magnifier-enabled true), then accessibility toolkit will re-enable itself after logging in again. So you need to run gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface toolkit-accessibility false after Gnome starts.
I’m doing that with an file in the autostart directory (~/.config/autostart/gnome-accessibility-toolkit-disabler.desktop):
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Exec=/bin/sh -c "gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface toolkit-accessibility false"
Name=Gnome Accessibility Toolkit disabler
Terminal=true
Type=Application
More context
This issue was happening on two laptops.
One has an integrated Intel GPU. I tested both video-linux and video-modesetting drivers (more info on setting the drivers).
The other has a Nvidia GPU. I tested both noveau and video-nvidia driver.
It looks like the choppiness was less pronounced on video-modesetting driver on Intel, and with the proprietary driver (video-nvidia) on Nvidia.
It was happening both on Wayland and X11, but normally I use X11.