9 ms·
Window Activation
- anonym29 1y ago[flagged]
- eddythompson80 1y agoWait, you can do that in X11 too... Is X11 spyware??? I know there is xeyes.. Is it..
- anonym29 1y agoIn the past, I would've said no. It absolutely had severe vulnerabilities, no question about it. Anything in userland monitoring keystrokes, mouse input, and display of anything else is userland is genuinely concerning; that said, these were byproducts of architectural decisions made long ago in open source software - not quite the same as deliberately writing code explicitly and specifically to take away privacy and control from your users the way Microsoft and Apple do. These days however, the negligence of the current custodian, Red Hat, does seem to border on malicious, especially when forks like XLibre are continuing to patch vulnerabilities while Red Hat refuses to merge patches into the "official" X11, as part of a coercive strategy of trying to force all users onto Wayland by allowing X11 to become even worse through active refusal and neglect to merge good PR's with security patches, despite being the official project owner and custodian. As a final note, I did not say that Windows and Mac OS were spyware, I said they were functionally spyware. There's a meaningful and nuanced difference between those two claims that I'm not sure you are discerning in accordance with my intent.
- eddythompson80 1y ago[flagged]
- anonym29 1y agoCan you be more specific about what parts of my perspective appear crazy, or fan-fic to you? There is heaps of well-documented evidence from reputable sources to support all of my claims that I would be eager to offer. What specific claims do you find dubious?
- eddythompson80 1y agoExercise left for the reader.
- anonym29 1y agoIs the snark really necessary here? These companies (Microsoft, Apple) have genuinely concerning practices regarding user ownership/control, data privacy, and there are legitimate concerns regarding the stewardship practices of Red Hat. I'm trying to engage in good faith, I've demonstrated a willingness to take your criticism seriously, and I'm willing to substantiate my claims, I don't understand why you're being so rude. If you don't care enough to keep the conversation going, that's fine, but why do the whole catty "mean girl" / light bullying / social ostracization routine along with it? There's no reason for that. @ dang @ tomhow
- tomhow 1y agoWe always want people to comment without snark, and I've replied to that commenter reminding them of that. Your comments in the subthread are quite inflammatory, starting with: > Windows and Mac OS are already functionally spyware posing as operating systems, as Microsoft and Apple are functionally intelligence agency partners posing as private corporations. I totally understand that it's a valid fear given what we know about the NSA, which has been heavily discussed here over the years. But when you blithely assert this kind of conspiracy theory as an accepted fact, it is inevitable that it will set off the kind of flamewar that has developed here. The guidelines ask us all to eschew flamebait and generic tangents.
- tomhow 1y ago
- anthk 1y agoOpenBSD has Xenocara and it does better than XLibre.
- Pesthuf 1y ago…if that was the reason, why would the operating systems give other applications the right to steal focus and record keystrokes? They control the kernel, they don’t need that.
- tomhow 1y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44836873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44836873 and marked it off topic.
- zb3 1y agoUmm.. thanks to this logic I had to write an extension just so I could open firefox using a keystroke, because otherwise the browser did not receive focus..
- wilkystyle 1y agoTrade-offs abound, but this sounds amazing to me. I already have hotkeys to instantly switch between browser/terminal/Emacs/etc., so it's not an issue for me. What is an issue is some other application stealing focus while I'm typing elsewhere and (as another commenter mentioned) accidentally pressing space or some other key that performs an action in whatever pop-up or application stole the focus.
- johnisgood 1y agoYou should have focused more! /s /pun intended But yeah, it has happened to me too, too often for it to be a problem. Especially the press the space bit. I am not sure this is the right solution, however, but I cannot think of any solution right now. Someone (in the comments) who has claimed to patch i3 may shed some light on what he did.
- antnisp 1y agoI just checked and assigning the shortcut in "System Settings>Keyboard>Shortcuts" will open Firefox and put it in focus.
- zb3 1y agoFor me in GNOME on Fedora this only works for chromium, for firefox I had to make an extension - I don't know why.
- Dylan16807 1y agoIs it flatpak or something or a normal install?
- nh2 1y agoThis mechanism sounds worth it. So many times on X11 do I type some chat message, and then some popup from another program comes up, which I accidentally confirm by my typing containing a space which presses the confirmation button, and I don't even know what the popup was. Or my password being typed in a popup. I once patched some code into i3 to prevent this for myself, but it wasn't a clean solution.
- eqvinox 1y agoKDE: Settings → Window Management → Window Behavior → Focus → Focus stealing prevention Even on "Low" (the options are None, Low, Medium, High, Extreme) I'm not seeing this behavior. Might be an i3 problem.
- nh2 1y agoNot sure I understand. You acknowledge that I use i3 as window manager, yet suggest settings for another (KWin != i3).
- eqvinox 1y agoYou categorised it as an X11 issue. I showed you another desktop session ("KDE:") has a specific setting for this. Therefore, it is clearly not an unsolvable X11 problem, and likely an i3 problem. You said "mechanism seems worth it". While there seems to be some work on extending it, this is not a new mechanism. A hypothetical i3 port to Wayland might very well have the same behaviour you dislike. (I wouldn't categorise sway as a port, rewrite seems more like it.)
- iforgotpassword 1y agoHuh I'm also on i3 but I never run into this problem. If any program would start stealing focus I'd just uninstall it and yell at the author/vendor.
- nh2 1y agoTry sleep 2 && zenity --entry --text="Enter text:" and switch to a different workspace where you start typing. The popup of the other program should appear and capture your input. As far as I know, i3 has no prevention for that. (In this example I'm spawning a program delayed to demonstrate that, but the same can happen to e.g. the gpg-agent password prompt popping up when an SSH connection that uses it reconnects, a chat window from an IM program, and so on. I think the idea of Wayland window activation / focus stealing prevention is that you can still have those windows pop up, but without them taking your input.)
- webdevver 1y agothe pragmatic thing to do is just let the Free Market decide. as far as i understand, windows just lets apps grab whatever window they want, whatever input they want, right? and everything Just Works(tm). app writers are discouraged to make things too clever by virtue of users having the choice of not using the app in question. why cant linux guys just... copy windows? android-ifying this space with permissions, channels, protocols etc, and pretending that apps are insecure is adding friction that benefits nobody imo.
- LorenDB 1y agoSometimes I type a password into one window, only to have another window pop up partway through and eat the rest of my input. This is why we need to prevent unintentional window activation.
- Linkd 1y agoThis happens so rarely, that it makes the UX impact to the every day user not worth it in my opinion.
- Barbing 1y agoFellow macOS users: is this rare for you as well? Maybe an auto-updater will do this, and if it happened with any frequency I might disable those autoupdates and try a macro-based (e.g. Keyboard Maestro) solution.
- LandR 1y agoWindows stealing focus happens to me multiple times a day on Windows when I'm working. It's infuriating.
- bloomca 1y agoIt is relatively easy to replicate if you open 2 apps and start typing in the first one which opened, both on macOS and Windows (I don't use Linux enough to notice this issue). A proper solution is probably faster startup times, but overall it pretty much never happens? Idk maybe I'm lucky or just conditioned to ignore it.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoI can only barely appreciate or fathom the endless masochistic self-abuse of maintaining functional, useful semi-headless UI automation testing for various Linux distros.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 1y agoIf you did have UI automation, you probably would do it at the DE level, and not swap things like X11 for Wayland. If you don't update (or use something like XFCE), it would probably remain functional for decades
- burnt-resistor 1y agoWTFIDE? (What the fuck is DE?)
- eqvinox 1y agoDesktop Environment
- dmart 1y agoAs a recent Linux (and Wayland) switcher, I love this behavior. It has always felt insane to me that macOS will just let some random auto-updater steal focus and eat your keystrokes while trying to work on something.
- vbezhenar 1y agoPowerful permissions are needed for powerful apps. I don't know about this particular issue, but for example, KiCAD has multiple issues with wayland being overly protective: [0]. For example KiCAD needs the ability to move cursor to provide good user experience. KiCAD needs the ability to move and place windows wherever it likes. KiCAD needs to control focus. KiCAD needs to prevent OpenGL throttling on inactive windows. These issues led KiCAD developers to reduce support for Wayland configurations to a bare minimum. So it's a delicate balance for operating systems to both allow powerful apps to implement complicated UI and to prevent badly written apps to do inconvenient things. [0]: https://www.kicad.org/blog/2025/06/KiCad-and-Wayland-Support/ https://www.kicad.org/blog/2025/06/KiCad-and-Wayland-Support...
- nottorp 1y ago> KiCAD needs to control focus. I don't know what KiCAD is, but it certainly does not need to control focus OS wide. Only between its own windows. It's probably not KiCAD's fault that the windowing system doesn't work like that, but still...
- suspended_state 1y agoThe page states: > Unpredictable window focus behavior that can interrupt workflows Which isn't exactly the same issue, so indeed it doesn't need to control focus.
- nottorp 1y agoThat sounds like my problem with focus being stolen by random apps while i work :)
- nottorp 1y agoI don't understand who historically has thought it's a good idea to allow applications to steal focus in the first place. It should be the window manager's decision, and the window manager should only switch focus if the user decides that.
- eqvinox 1y agoKDE has KWin settings controlling this. I have no idea if this is some kind of a fixup after the fact or whether the window manager always controls this, but at least it does on a KDE X11 session.
- guardian5x 1y agoWell, sometimes the user expects the focus to shift, like the example mentioned when you click a link in one application and your browser in the background should come into focus when it opens a new tab. Some applications just decide to steal focus when the user does not expect it, and that is the problem.
- nottorp 1y agoYes but there's no way for the OS to know if the focus request is legitimate, is there? Can't even say "browsers are allowed to grab focus" because they'll grab it for a stupid window telling you to update the browser or what new features no one cares about they introduced. I'd prefer to have to switch focus to the browser manually than have the stupid ubuntu update manager steal focus when i'm typing in the terminal...
- elehack 1y agoThe article is about a mechanism for the OS to validate focus requests. The application with the link requests a focus token, and passes it to the browser along with the open-link request, and the browser can then request focus. It isn't perfect, because there's no way to know that the browser isn't using the token to request focus for something else, but maintaining and validating chain of custody for focus across applications is exactly the problem it looks like they are working on solving.
- sho_hn 1y agoEarlier discussion with comments from devs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44784312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44784312
- rs186 1y agoClicked the article because my blurry eyes read "on Windows Activation", and I was like "huh, what's interesting about Windows activation?" Read the first paragraph and it was really confusing. Still the same after reading it again. Until I looked at the title. Oh, window activation is what we are actually talking about.
- andrewmcwatters 1y agoI too was hoping for something like a deep dive into key management reverse engineering. lol
- userbinator 1y agoYou may like this: https://sabah.forumotion.com/t333-all-you-need-to-know-about-windows-product-keys https://sabah.forumotion.com/t333-all-you-need-to-know-about...
- xp84 1y agoDon't feel bad -- the other frontpage story "ultra thin business card runs fluid simulation" I thought it said "...RUINS fluid simulation."
- wavemode 1y agoI'm worse than you - when I came across that article, I spent a while wondering whether "ulathrin" was the name of a company, or some new metal alloy. Your comment is what made me realize I misread it.
- joombaga 1y agoI made BOTH of those mistakes. I thought someone working at the company Ultrahin leaned over and dropped a business card into the particle accelerator and ruined a million dollar experiment.
- 1y ago
- jovial_cavalier 1y agoStealing focus is possible in X11, but the window manager needs to implement it. For instance, my dwm build does not refocus for any reason other than the user moving the mouse or pressing a key
- rekabis 1y agoThis title seems click-baity, as the term is most frequently used for registering Windows. That was my curiosity when I clicked through. I somehow doubt it would have gotten as many clicks had it been “Window Focus”.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 1y agoI don't think Linux users, much less Linux desktop developers, are thinking about Windows license activation.
- satiric 1y agoThere is no indication in the title that this is about Linux.
- sho_hn 1y agoIt's called window activation in the standard protocol the blog is about, so it's technically correct terminology.
- andrewmcwatters 1y agoIt's not just windows that I love popping up in my face actively! interrupting what I'm doing, but also ones that have autofocus elements, doubly stealing my attention and not having a debounce for ignoring actions, as others here have mentioned. Type-type-type...HEY THIS APPLICATION HAS SOME UPDATES HERES A CHANGEL-keypress closes window I wanted to read that, damn it!
- treve 1y agoGreat idea, but pretty painful at the moment. I guess not everything uses this protocol yet, so I often can't find (for example) my password pops under other windows. Hoping this gets a bit better over time, it's one of the last remaining Wayland pains.
- wronex 1y agoWait, hold on. Is this actually an issue that needs a solution? It feels like Wayland is doing something very stupid here. Why not let apps control their windows? I cannot remember when an app stole focus last time. The only time this makes sense is while entering a password. But that is a very specific case that can be solved by having the password dialog on a protected desktop (ie. one with only that single window.)
- chmod775 1y ago> I cannot remember when an app stole focus last time. You must not use Windows where every application comes with its own auto-updater, often stealing focus and minimizing your game once when the updater pops up, and then again when it restarts the main application it just updated. Devs can't be trusted to not turn their users homicidal. Someone has to stop them for their own good.
- eqvinox 1y ago> Well, you probably know by now that Wayland, unlike X, doesn’t let one application force its idiot wishes on everyone else. …I thought {not allowing,managing} this on X11 is the window manager's job? (kwin certainly doesn't allow it on my X11 session…) Or is this arguing about "uncooperative"/"hostile" applications?
- imchillyb 1y agoThe power of a system does not lie within its mechanisms, systems, and strategies. The power of a system allows one -near infinite- ability to create and manipulate those mechanisms, systems, and strategies. The most powerful systems have few safeguards or rails, and user beware. The most restrictive systems we hand to grandma and grandpa, knowing there is little they can actually do with them.
- josteink 1y ago> In essence, an application cannot take focus, it can only receive focus. In the example above, your chat app would request an XDG Activation token from the compositor To be fair, the same is mostly true on Windows, but through some different APIs. Applications being able to put themselves in front unconditionally was for a long time a huge source of pain for the user, due to abusive/malicious software, and probably a reason Windows was malware platform #1. This is honestly a reasonable design.
- chmod775 1y agoOn my my glorified gaming console (Windows desktop PC) it drives me absolutely nuts when I'm in the middle of some competitive game and a random auto-updater pops up, minimizing my current current fullscreen application. Bonus points if it happens again 30 seconds later because it launches the application after updating it (Why? I didn't even have it open before!) In some cases this had to get past QA at two billion-dollar companies, and neither did something about it. But that's far from the only way we've regressed in software quality. Really not worth mentioning. A drop of piss in an ocean of sewage. I'm glad that at least on my actual computer I get to focus on work distraction free - likely because most of the software running on there is designed by its users and survived by merit, rather than being the brainfart of some corporate committee more concerned with other things.