FWIW on KDE this is easily doable. I have my taskbars set up with per monitor taskbars as well.I can do pretty much anything while playing a game, watching a movie, etc.

Plus, you can add window rules in a nice to use GUI to automagically do it for you!

Getting a desk clock was a weirdly useful change for me, maybe try that?

Which has the added bonus of working even in fullscreen games.

I don't get the problem with hitting [meta] checking the time real quick, then hitting [meta] and being put back into your work. I do it with full screen games all the time with almost no issues.

But very widespread.

Do you never check your phone and realize you are now suddenly doing something completely unrelated?

Phones are focus breaking by design. It takes effort, silencing them.

I live by timers/alarms on my phone... if I don't set an alarm/timer, I'll never break focus for meetings etc.

Even if you don't get pulled into something else, having to stop what you're doing to check the time sounds like a bad UI.

That's not on you to say, and pretty fucking tone deaf to boot.

If someone cannot look at their phone to find out the time without becoming distracted and losing their focus, that’s not a phone problem.

Maybe, but why should you have to pull out a separate device to check the time?

The point is, there's no clock in any other monitor because the top bar is only on the main one.

To me it's not about a couple seconds that takes me to look at my phone. It's the inability to have it on all my monitors just like all other DE. And it's not only the time. You can't access your notifications, your app indicator icons or anything you add to that top bar through extensions.

Sure - I get the point, but also have never found the top bar on another monitor to be super prohibitive to my production. It's rare that I don't have a spare moment to move the mouse to check notifications (in fact, if they were close to my full-screen work environment, I might be tempted to check them MORE frequently).

you can literally press Meta/Win key and have Gnome's overview... want something better move to XFCE :P

It is not about the time spent looking at the time, it is about being unable to ignore shiny stuff when you get out of fullscreen.