Unity Desktop and 18.04: Get Workspace Preview feature which 16.04 had

Question

Unity on Ubuntu 16.04 has a nice feature. When switching among workspaces, the switcher preview dims the other workspaces to highlight the current workspace.

However on Ubuntu 18.04 this feature does not work for the background.

Ubuntu 16.04 Ubuntu 18.04

Both screenshots above are taken on fresh installations after manually installing ubuntu-unity-desktop (only for Ubuntu 18.04) and compizconfig-settings-manager and after increasing the virtual desktop size to 4x4.

A dist-upgrade from 16.04 to 18.04 yields the same fault.

How can I activate this helpful effect?

Answer 1

the last 5 years I worked with Ubuntu 16.04 and I really enjoyed it. Now after it's LTS is over I installed a new Ubuntu 20.04 together with unity desktop. But then I also faced this missing feature of highlighted workspaces in the quick switcher using Keyboard shortcuts [Ctrl + Alt + ArrowKeys]. If there are open windows, in the preview they are brighter for the selected instance. But you don't see a difference when you navigate over empty workspaces. Using [Super+S] the currently selected workspace is marked with a border around it (that's how it should also look like for the quick switcher, as it did for ubuntu 16.04).

Are there any news about the original question? I am used to have a large workspace grid and the navigation over empty ones of them is sometimes very confusing now.

Thanks for every tip about that topic!

BR Daniel