MacOS – Fullscreen app unusable due to focus loss

desktopmacos

i am quite new to the OSX system and having some issues with ElCaptain.

Basically a fullscreen application (Android Studio in my case) loses the focus and i have to kill it via the task manager in order to get it up and working again.

To reproduce it i just have to open Android Studio. Then open the Genymotion Device manager and then the desktop switches to my main desktop (where non-fullscreen apps are placed). If i switch back to Android Studio again, the input focus is still on the Genymotion windows which is placed in the background. In this case i cannot bring the genymotion window back to foreground again and Android Studio does not accept any input anymore.

Is there any hotkey combination or other trick to get that window back again? I can see a subwindow "Genymotion*" if i "right"click on Android Studio, but its greyed out and i cannot switch to it this way.

Any tips?

Best Answer

You could use a combination of App Expose (4 finger swipe down) and Mission Control ( 4 finger swipe up or F3) to view all possible app windows. Make sure you have these setting enabled.

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MacOS – Lion Fullscreen Desktop Switching Quirk

I'd recommend not allocating any GUI elements until after the command line input is finished.

If you run your app from a non-fullscreen Terminal, you'll probably notice that the app launches in the Dock (even if no windows appear) before you finish entering your command line stuff. This is probably what's causing the Space-switch.

Using AppleScript to open an application without the app stealing focus

(I removed the original script, but I couldn't come up with anything better than this either.)

set fw to front window
do shell script "open ~/Notes/todo.txt -Fa iA\\ Writer"
delay 0.1
tell application "System Events" to tell process "iA Writer"
    perform action "AXPress" of (button 1 where subrole is "AXFullScreenButton") of window 1
end tell
delay 1.5
activate fw

WriteRoom has an option to open documents in custom full screen windows. If it's selected, you could use something like open file.txt -Fjga WriteRoom.

If someone else just needs to open an application on the background, you can use open -jg or launch. launch sometimes opens a visible window if an application isn't open and open -jg if an application is open but has no windows.

set b to "com.apple.TextEdit"
tell application "System Events"
    if bundle identifier of processes contains b then
        launch application id b
    else
        do shell script "open -jgb " & b
    end if
end tell

Best Answer

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MacOS – Lion Fullscreen Desktop Switching Quirk

Using AppleScript to open an application without the app stealing focus

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