IDEA randomly steals focus while still in background

Answered

For the past couple of months I've had this weird problem. IntelliJ IDEA (IC-201.7846.6) is usually open idle in the background, but from time to time (averages at about once per day) it suddenly grabs focus but doesn't go to top. If I happened to be typing in another application, watching full screen video, or wherever, the keystrokes end up in the file open in IDEA instead of the foreground application, and I have to click the foreground application to re-grab focus. It seems it doesn't happen entirely random as I've seen a couple of times where it occurred after using IDEA and then doing something else for 15~30 minutes when it occurs. It happens on two different computers both running Ubuntu 18.04LTS.

I can't find a bug report but the problem is so vague that I cannot exclude it either. Has anyone else experienced similar things?

 

 

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9 comments

IDEA-106716 is not my problem as that one involves the window going to the foreground whereas in my case it stays hidden behind othe applications.

I see in the comments that someone got my symptoms after setting `suppress.focus.stealing=true` but I don't have that flag. (I have this flag how and am waiting if my issue returns.)

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I haven't seen it happen in two weeks, so I can conclude that `suppress.focus.stealing=true` is probably a good workaround.

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Cristiadu: "This problem is the most annoying thing on Intelij for me. I hate to be typing on the Terminal and my words appearing on a random class inside Intelij because they feel I want the app in my face right away."

I couldn't have described the problem better myself.

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Hi Vojta , please try updating the IDE to the latest version from https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download .

If the problem remains, please raise a new issue at https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issues/IDEA , and provide diagnostic data for the investigation. (https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011841360-Reporting-focus-problems)

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Is there an IntelliJ setting "please never steal focus!"? (There should be: when I start IntelliJ, for example, and do something else while it's revving up I don't expect or want it to steal focus back when it feels it is ready.)

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Tim T Hanson Actually, there is:

If it doesn't help in your case though, please report the problem to YouTrack as described in the comment above.

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Arina Efremova I set this value in the registry in the past. Now PyCharm randomly started stealing focus again and I can no longer find this in the registry. Where has it moved? PyCharm is almost unusable for me without the option to disable focus stealing.

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Hi Goldfish 

First, try updating the IDE to the latest version.

If that doesn't solve your problem, please submit a new bug report to our issue tracker describing what happens in more detail and providing additional diagnostic data for analysis.

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