9 ms·

One of the most annoying things after installing Tahoe for me, that for no good reason an ordinary app would randomly lose its focus. In the midst of my typing.

by iLemming 10mo ago

One of the most annoying things after installing Tahoe for me, that for no good reason an ordinary app would randomly lose its focus. In the midst of my typing. This is unbelievably preposterous and I just can't stop hating Apple for this crap. How the fuck this is acceptable? I just have no words. What makes it even worse that I couldn't even complain about it on their support pages - they just keep removing my comments for being "non-constructive". This is some random bug, and many people have complained about it, how am I suppose to make it "more constructive"? Send them the exact configuration of constellations, the number of monitors I use and their positioning angles, log the keyboard rate and delay, the latency, the level of magnetic interference caused by my Bluetooth devices, etc.?

ridgeguy 10mo ago
Interesting. This is exactly the problem I've begun to have on my 14" M2 MB Air. I'm on 15.7.3. The issue started with 15.7.1. Here I've been thinking it's a hardware problem, like some sort of mechanical intermittent. Maybe not.
steve_taylor 10mo ago
Focus stealing has been an issue in windowed multi-tasking environments from the beginning. It's certainly been an issue in all macOS/OS X versions I've used since I started in 2011.
- PaulDavisThe1st 10mo ago
  I've been using windowed multi-tasking environments since 1986. Never been a problem for me (SunOS -> Solaris -> Linux). I rely very, very, very much on focus-follows-mouse.
- asystole 10mo ago
  This bug isn't that. It's the frontmost app losing focus to nothing.
  - jijijijij 10mo ago
    You are using it wrong. Just install the SuperTyping app. It's sooo good and intuitive. Totally worth the $189, if you consider how often you need to type something. I also recommend Little Snitch as firewall and Parallels for virtualization. Does anyone have a recommendation for bootloader or filesystem app? Preferably subscription model for intuitive accounting.
- mdnahas 10mo ago
  Agreed. Since sharing input between multiple applications (and the OS services) is its primary role, you would think that UI designers would have “thou shalt not steal focus” as a commandment, but that is not the case. My latest version of the problem is with Ubuntu Gnome. Upgrade software and, later, you will be interrupted with a pop-up window to enter your system password. Not only is this an interruption, I’m always doubtful that this is the system asking for a sudoer password! UIs, in my experience, are very bad at handling “interrupts”. Sorry, my dad designed chips, so I use that hardware term when talking about notifications and other times another application needs to notify or get the input from user. Personally, I’d have the UI change the color/texture of the system menubar/taskbar and wait for the user to click it.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
bsder 10mo ago
> how am I suppose to make it "more constructive"? Obviously by shutting the hell up, you ungrateful serf. The beatings will continue until morale improves. Seriously, though, if you want this to stop, people like you are going to have to start voting with their wallets. I finally pulled the plug on macOS a couple years ago for Linux, and I haven't been unhappy about it. However, I did make a point of buying a laptop that was well supported on Linux (a Lenovo X1 Carbon that was in the same price class as an equivalent Mac).
- marssaxman 10mo ago
  I did the same a decade ago, and I've been fully content with my Linux-only life - but a new MacBook recently arrived along with a new job, so now I'm using Tahoe whether I like it or not. It's generally difficult to vote with someone else's wallet.
  - bsder 10mo ago
    Well, be glad you're working for a company that is still willing to stump up properly for hardware. Too many companies are balking at spending money on hardware right now. While I would love to think that this will drive Linux adoption, it probably won't. Microsoft is going to cave on TPM 2.0 for Windows 11 or extend Windows 10 support much further.
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    - DerArzt 10mo ago
      I can't speak for all companies, but the feeling I get from mine is that the issue is more about the maintenance and support for Mac rather than the little extra spend to get a MacBook pro instead of the standard windows box.
    - NBJack 10mo ago
      It will be interesting to see how RAM prices affect the behavior of all companies. I wouldn't mind if this finally lights a fire under certain software companies to also actually optimize their shit for memory use, but... I'm not that optimistic.
crazygringo 10mo ago
I appreciate your frustration, but at the same time what is Apple supposed to do? If it's affecting only a tiny number of users, and you just happen to be an unlucky one, and they don't know how to reproduce it, and you can't help them reproduce it, then what? I think they just have to wait until somebody (such as yourself) is able to figure out with some kind of logging what is happening. E.g. the first question to answer is probably what actually gets the focus, if anything? To produce a bug report that at least suggests which area of code might be responsible. I had a similar problem at one point, then finally figured out it was when I accidentally hit the fn button which triggered the emoji picker window and moved focus to it (IIRC), but it was off-screen because I'd previously used it on a secondary monitor. Reconnecting the monitor and moving the window back to my primary display fixed it. (Obviously, it's a bug to show a picker window outside of visible coordinates, and I think it got fixed eventually.) But it also might not be Apple at all, if it's some third-party background utility with a bug. E.g. if that were happening to me, my first thought would be that it might be a Logitech bug or a Karabiner-Elements bug. Uninstalling any non-Apple background processes or utilities seems like a necessary first step.
- tw04 10mo ago
  I can tell you bartender 6 has been perpetually broken since release and does this. I finally gave up on it after the devs sent me “fixes” that never fixed anything.
- JoBrad 10mo ago
  Windows has had a “prevent apps from stealing focus” option for at least a decade. It was one of the things that I still dislike the most about macOS, and Apple can absolutely address this.
  - Someone1234 10mo ago
    Windows has no such option, and regularly steals focus, particularly Visual Studio/Debug tools/applications loading. It had an option for a short period with the original TweakUI, but Microsoft removed support for it even in the registry. No OS should steal focus, Windows absolutely is guilty of it.
two_handfuls 10mo ago
I wonder whether this could be a touchpad malfunction, causing phantom clicks that move focus. To diagnose, you could temporarily disable it and use an external mouse.
- Avamander 10mo ago
  External mice also suck with macOS though.
  - Arainach 10mo ago
    Not sure why this is getting downvotes, it's absolutely true. For a very long time you couldn't even set different scroll directions for external mice and the touchpad - even if it's (maybe? I forget) supported now it's always been an area Apple didn't care about and was far behind Windows and Linux.
    - mercanlIl 10mo ago
      I assume it’s getting down votes because it’s off-topic. The parent comment was suggesting external mice as a temporary measure to debug the intermittent issue they’re facing. Whether or not external micr suck on MacOS doesn’t really matter. The objective was to diagnose an issue.
      - Avamander 10mo ago
        Well, if the suggestion is to use an alternative for a while to diagnose an issue that causes equivalent or even worse issues, then it might not be(come) very debuggable.
    - anemoknee 10mo ago
      It's not supported as of now. Tools like Scroll Reverser are still needed to specify scrolling behavior between the touchpad and an external mouse.
    - AndrewDavis 10mo ago
rufo 10mo ago
Random possibility - if you have Bartender installed, it's buggy as shit on Tahoe, and has some really weird stuff it does with hiding the cursor and otherwise changing the focus around. I haven't switched off yet because the alternatives don't anywhere near as much functionality, but I probably will at some point soon, because while the updates have made it somewhat better it's still a pretty terrible experience at times.
- lurkersince2013 10mo ago
  Avoid using Bartender: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1d8a0wv/if_you_are_a_mac_user_and_use_bartender_stop/ https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1d8a0wv/if_you_are... https://talk.macpowerusers.com/t/bartender-change-of-ownership-potential-security-issue/37431/161?page=9 https://talk.macpowerusers.com/t/bartender-change-of-ownersh...
  - embedding-shape 10mo ago
    Never heard of Bartender before, seems to be this: > superpowered your menu bar, giving you total control over your menu bar items, what's displayed, and when, with menu bar items only showing when you need them. Which also, for some reason has permission to record your desktop and recently had a change of owner? I'd be reformatting my computer so quickly if I found this out about software on my computer...
    - rufo 10mo ago
      I replied to the parent post, but in short, I used it through a subscription service that specifically didn’t update until the ownership issues were clarified to their (and ultimately my) satisfaction. The screen recording permissions are needed for it to be aware of when menu bar icons update so it can move them in and out of the menu bar; I believe later versions allow you to skip screen recording permissions if you’re willing to forgo that feature.
  - rufo 10mo ago
    Yep, I’m aware of the (incredibly-poorly-handled) change of ownership. I’ve been using it through a SetApp[1] subscription, and they stayed on the pre-acquisition version for quite a while; long enough that enough details came out about the new owner and I felt _relatively_ okay with continuing to use it after it got updates, especially going through another party. The Tahoe issues are making me rethink that heavily now - but the alternatives I briefly looked at when I upgraded to Tahoe all seemed incredibly lacking in one way or another, and I haven’t wanted to blow up my menu bar yet again :/ [1]: https://setapp.com/ https://setapp.com/
literallyroy 10mo ago
Delinia does this currently (I don’t think the fix is public yet). You can run a python script to track the focused window every few seconds to identify what’s stealing focus.
anon373839 10mo ago
I have no information to add, but I also have started experiencing this after “upgrading” to Tahoe. Never was a problem before.
socalgal2 10mo ago
The support pages are not for you to contact Apple. They are there for users to help other users. The cynical person would say they are there to get unpaid labor from other users so Apple can spend less on support. If you want to report something to Apple you use the "Feedback Assistant App"
- SanjayMehta 10mo ago
  The support pages are exactly this. They're called Level 0 support in most companies internally.
  - mikae1 10mo ago
    "Just award them with some stars or points or whatever, and they'll be happy." I wish these people would wake up and spend their time helping peers on a forum for some open source project instead.
    - fauigerzigerk 10mo ago
      There's a bunch of hyperactive people in those Apple "support" forums who don't actually help anyone. They respond to almost every discussion thread aggressively deflecting any criticism directed at Apple. They pretend to offer "solutions" so their posts don't come across as unconstructive, but their solutions are always essentially the same, often culminating in a factory reset. There is never any attempt to get to the bottom of anything or diagnose what the actual issue is. They are volunteering their time to make people shut up, bow their head in shame and go away. I don't think this is what you want in an open source project.
      - lossyalgo 10mo ago
        That may be true to some extent but I am still often able to find some kind of answer, granted it's often just "NO, Apple doesn't do this".
      - zarzavat 10mo ago
ricardobeat 10mo ago
I have experienced the same, and still have no idea what is going on. Especially annoying when every app is likely to have single-key shortcuts which end up being accidentally triggered.
- Zizizizz 10mo ago
  Do you have Admin by Request on your machine (if its a company laptop). That was the culprit for me.
Zizizizz 10mo ago
I had this, it was our company's security software prompting an update (Admin by Request) that was getting hidden. An update to that software and the latest tahoe update seems to have resolved that issue.
fzeindl 10mo ago
That is incidentally one of the many papercuts that are widely accepted in Windows, but never were a problem on a mac. Don’t try to interact with a windows desktop while it is still booting up. Better to wait for everything to settle down, otherwise apps will constantly snatch away focus and your typing will go into random applications.
- sumo89 10mo ago
  I recently built a windows PC again for gaming. Haven't used one for years. Everything's fresh, loads of room on hard drives etc and still sometimes it'll just be weird and needs a reset. But it doesn't surprise me, it's sad we've come to tolerate that from the world's most popular OS.
  - IrishTechie 10mo ago
    I have a Windows 11, macOS and Ubuntu Desktop VM that I alternate across throughout the week, I find I need to reset all three periodically to sort out random weirdness. It has more to do with which machine I've used most in the last few weeks not which OS is in-use in my experience.
    - mcny 10mo ago
      Familiarity might be the biggest differentiator. I switch between windows on my work computer and fedora gnome on my personal computer (and only interact with Debian server over ssh) so I am more at ease on Windows than I am with something like cachy OS and KDE.
    - lnenad 10mo ago
      I have the same setup, just Arch instead of ubuntu on my laptop and I very rarely have any issues (like maybe once per month) that require me to reboot.
      - tsimionescu 10mo ago
        Once every few weeks and once per month seem pretty much the exact same - and about in line with my own experience with Windows on my work machine.
shortercode 10mo ago
I looked into this and the issue is the inbuilt SecurityAgent briefly taking focus. For me I believe it’s related to some management setting our company has added not getting on with Tahoe.
mcv 10mo ago
My MacBook is corporate, and it's therefore loaded with a ton of corporate auto-update, VPN and apparently questionnaire software. Stuff pops up at the most annoying times. And sometimes, indeed it takes focus away from the thing I'm currently typing. Extremely annoying. But apparently Apple is not the only offender. Just as I was typing this (on Harmonic on Android), a popup popped up, ate a few of the characters I typed and disappeared again. No idea what it said. Why do people do this? Don't hijack let applications I didn't ask for hijack my input.
mgoetzke 10mo ago
Dont get me started on the number of times Signal/formerly Skype opened up a dialog in-the-midst of me typing and me accidentally accepting a call because i happened to write 'space' at that moment in time
phkahler 10mo ago
Tahoe made at least one undocumented change to timer events in the GUI. This resulted in a difficult to debug problem in solvespace. I suspect we were doing something "wrong" and had to correct it, but the fact remains they made a change to how some GUI events work and didn't tell anyone.
nkotov 10mo ago
By chance are you using any Logitech stuff? I have a similar issue and narrowed it down to one of the Logi Options taking focus away randomly.
crucialfelix 10mo ago
Do you have a logitech mouse? If so you need to reinstall the logi and/or G Hub apps. The cert changed and that's what's causing it to fail and keep grabbing focus away. Incredibly strange bug. https://support.logi.com/hc/en-us/articles/37493733117847-Options-and-G-HUB-macOS-Certificate-Issue https://support.logi.com/hc/en-us/articles/37493733117847-Op...
ljm 10mo ago
I updated to iPadOS 26 on my iPad Pro, opened Safari, and tried to log into a website. For some reason the full-screen keyboard didn't load, all I could get was a miniature thing that floated on the left part of the screen (like the two-handed layout but with the full keyboard in one half, like typing on an iPhone 5s). The memes about Steve Jobs turning in his grave are true. He would not have stood for slop like this for even a moment. Apple's quality game was miles higher back in the day. Even if they tried to do some kind of Snow Leopard maintenance release for all of their products, I don't think they could raise the bar on quality high enough in just a single release. They'd have to do it a few times with nothing new to show for it. This speaks nothing of the transition to MacOS looking more and more like a dysfunctional toy since Jony Ive left and Alan Dye took over. Tiger and Snow Leopard were the peak.
gizajob 10mo ago
If only Stevesie was still here to roll some heads :(
imbnwa 10mo ago
> One of the most annoying things after installing Tahoe for me, that for no good reason an ordinary app would randomly lose its focus. In the midst of my typing. So its not just me!
dijital 10mo ago
I've been troubleshooting this on and off since early December. There's a handy Python script here to show log which application is stealing focus: https://superuser.com/a/874314 https://superuser.com/a/874314 If you find it's SecurityAgent then you might be hitting this bug: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/807112 https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/807112 I suspect it's related to a JIT privilege management app my company uses.
mastazi 10mo ago
I had the same issue, and in my case it turned out it was caused by Logitech G Hub which was running in the background. I uninstalled it and did not experience the issue again. My suggestion is to check any background process that might be doing that.
Rastonbury 10mo ago
Oh decent timing, this happened to me first time today, I even looked down at the track pad to see if my hand was close enough to accidentally swipe it because I felt it wasn't

ridgeguy 10mo ago

Interesting. This is exactly the problem I've begun to have on my 14" M2 MB Air. I'm on 15.7.3. The issue started with 15.7.1. Here I've been thinking it's a hardware problem, like some sort of mechanical intermittent. Maybe not.

steve_taylor 10mo ago

Focus stealing has been an issue in windowed multi-tasking environments from the beginning. It's certainly been an issue in all macOS/OS X versions I've used since I started in 2011.

PaulDavisThe1st 10mo ago
I've been using windowed multi-tasking environments since 1986. Never been a problem for me (SunOS -> Solaris -> Linux). I rely very, very, very much on focus-follows-mouse.
asystole 10mo ago
This bug isn't that. It's the frontmost app losing focus to nothing.
- jijijijij 10mo ago
  You are using it wrong. Just install the SuperTyping app. It's sooo good and intuitive. Totally worth the $189, if you consider how often you need to type something. I also recommend Little Snitch as firewall and Parallels for virtualization. Does anyone have a recommendation for bootloader or filesystem app? Preferably subscription model for intuitive accounting.
mdnahas 10mo ago
Agreed. Since sharing input between multiple applications (and the OS services) is its primary role, you would think that UI designers would have “thou shalt not steal focus” as a commandment, but that is not the case. My latest version of the problem is with Ubuntu Gnome. Upgrade software and, later, you will be interrupted with a pop-up window to enter your system password. Not only is this an interruption, I’m always doubtful that this is the system asking for a sudoer password! UIs, in my experience, are very bad at handling “interrupts”. Sorry, my dad designed chips, so I use that hardware term when talking about notifications and other times another application needs to notify or get the input from user. Personally, I’d have the UI change the color/texture of the system menubar/taskbar and wait for the user to click it.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]

bsder 10mo ago

> how am I suppose to make it "more constructive"? Obviously by shutting the hell up, you ungrateful serf. The beatings will continue until morale improves. Seriously, though, if you want this to stop, people like you are going to have to start voting with their wallets. I finally pulled the plug on macOS a couple years ago for Linux, and I haven't been unhappy about it. However, I did make a point of buying a laptop that was well supported on Linux (a Lenovo X1 Carbon that was in the same price class as an equivalent Mac).

marssaxman 10mo ago
I did the same a decade ago, and I've been fully content with my Linux-only life - but a new MacBook recently arrived along with a new job, so now I'm using Tahoe whether I like it or not. It's generally difficult to vote with someone else's wallet.
- bsder 10mo ago
  Well, be glad you're working for a company that is still willing to stump up properly for hardware. Too many companies are balking at spending money on hardware right now. While I would love to think that this will drive Linux adoption, it probably won't. Microsoft is going to cave on TPM 2.0 for Windows 11 or extend Windows 10 support much further.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - DerArzt 10mo ago
    I can't speak for all companies, but the feeling I get from mine is that the issue is more about the maintenance and support for Mac rather than the little extra spend to get a MacBook pro instead of the standard windows box.
  - NBJack 10mo ago
    It will be interesting to see how RAM prices affect the behavior of all companies. I wouldn't mind if this finally lights a fire under certain software companies to also actually optimize their shit for memory use, but... I'm not that optimistic.

crazygringo 10mo ago

I appreciate your frustration, but at the same time what is Apple supposed to do? If it's affecting only a tiny number of users, and you just happen to be an unlucky one, and they don't know how to reproduce it, and you can't help them reproduce it, then what? I think they just have to wait until somebody (such as yourself) is able to figure out with some kind of logging what is happening. E.g. the first question to answer is probably what actually gets the focus, if anything? To produce a bug report that at least suggests which area of code might be responsible. I had a similar problem at one point, then finally figured out it was when I accidentally hit the fn button which triggered the emoji picker window and moved focus to it (IIRC), but it was off-screen because I'd previously used it on a secondary monitor. Reconnecting the monitor and moving the window back to my primary display fixed it. (Obviously, it's a bug to show a picker window outside of visible coordinates, and I think it got fixed eventually.) But it also might not be Apple at all, if it's some third-party background utility with a bug. E.g. if that were happening to me, my first thought would be that it might be a Logitech bug or a Karabiner-Elements bug. Uninstalling any non-Apple background processes or utilities seems like a necessary first step.

tw04 10mo ago
I can tell you bartender 6 has been perpetually broken since release and does this. I finally gave up on it after the devs sent me “fixes” that never fixed anything.
JoBrad 10mo ago
Windows has had a “prevent apps from stealing focus” option for at least a decade. It was one of the things that I still dislike the most about macOS, and Apple can absolutely address this.
- Someone1234 10mo ago
  Windows has no such option, and regularly steals focus, particularly Visual Studio/Debug tools/applications loading. It had an option for a short period with the original TweakUI, but Microsoft removed support for it even in the registry. No OS should steal focus, Windows absolutely is guilty of it.

two_handfuls 10mo ago

I wonder whether this could be a touchpad malfunction, causing phantom clicks that move focus. To diagnose, you could temporarily disable it and use an external mouse.

Avamander 10mo ago
External mice also suck with macOS though.
- Arainach 10mo ago
  Not sure why this is getting downvotes, it's absolutely true. For a very long time you couldn't even set different scroll directions for external mice and the touchpad - even if it's (maybe? I forget) supported now it's always been an area Apple didn't care about and was far behind Windows and Linux.
  - mercanlIl 10mo ago
    I assume it’s getting down votes because it’s off-topic. The parent comment was suggesting external mice as a temporary measure to debug the intermittent issue they’re facing. Whether or not external micr suck on MacOS doesn’t really matter. The objective was to diagnose an issue.
    - Avamander 10mo ago
      Well, if the suggestion is to use an alternative for a while to diagnose an issue that causes equivalent or even worse issues, then it might not be(come) very debuggable.
  - anemoknee 10mo ago
    It's not supported as of now. Tools like Scroll Reverser are still needed to specify scrolling behavior between the touchpad and an external mouse.
  - AndrewDavis 10mo ago

rufo 10mo ago

Random possibility - if you have Bartender installed, it's buggy as shit on Tahoe, and has some really weird stuff it does with hiding the cursor and otherwise changing the focus around. I haven't switched off yet because the alternatives don't anywhere near as much functionality, but I probably will at some point soon, because while the updates have made it somewhat better it's still a pretty terrible experience at times.

lurkersince2013 10mo ago
Avoid using Bartender: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1d8a0wv/if_you_are_a_mac_user_and_use_bartender_stop/ https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1d8a0wv/if_you_are... https://talk.macpowerusers.com/t/bartender-change-of-ownership-potential-security-issue/37431/161?page=9 https://talk.macpowerusers.com/t/bartender-change-of-ownersh...
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  Never heard of Bartender before, seems to be this: > superpowered your menu bar, giving you total control over your menu bar items, what's displayed, and when, with menu bar items only showing when you need them. Which also, for some reason has permission to record your desktop and recently had a change of owner? I'd be reformatting my computer so quickly if I found this out about software on my computer...
  - rufo 10mo ago
    I replied to the parent post, but in short, I used it through a subscription service that specifically didn’t update until the ownership issues were clarified to their (and ultimately my) satisfaction. The screen recording permissions are needed for it to be aware of when menu bar icons update so it can move them in and out of the menu bar; I believe later versions allow you to skip screen recording permissions if you’re willing to forgo that feature.
- rufo 10mo ago
  Yep, I’m aware of the (incredibly-poorly-handled) change of ownership. I’ve been using it through a SetApp[1] subscription, and they stayed on the pre-acquisition version for quite a while; long enough that enough details came out about the new owner and I felt _relatively_ okay with continuing to use it after it got updates, especially going through another party. The Tahoe issues are making me rethink that heavily now - but the alternatives I briefly looked at when I upgraded to Tahoe all seemed incredibly lacking in one way or another, and I haven’t wanted to blow up my menu bar yet again :/ [1]: https://setapp.com/ https://setapp.com/

literallyroy 10mo ago

Delinia does this currently (I don’t think the fix is public yet). You can run a python script to track the focused window every few seconds to identify what’s stealing focus.

anon373839 10mo ago

I have no information to add, but I also have started experiencing this after “upgrading” to Tahoe. Never was a problem before.

socalgal2 10mo ago

The support pages are not for you to contact Apple. They are there for users to help other users. The cynical person would say they are there to get unpaid labor from other users so Apple can spend less on support. If you want to report something to Apple you use the "Feedback Assistant App"

SanjayMehta 10mo ago
The support pages are exactly this. They're called Level 0 support in most companies internally.
- mikae1 10mo ago
  "Just award them with some stars or points or whatever, and they'll be happy." I wish these people would wake up and spend their time helping peers on a forum for some open source project instead.
  - fauigerzigerk 10mo ago
    There's a bunch of hyperactive people in those Apple "support" forums who don't actually help anyone. They respond to almost every discussion thread aggressively deflecting any criticism directed at Apple. They pretend to offer "solutions" so their posts don't come across as unconstructive, but their solutions are always essentially the same, often culminating in a factory reset. There is never any attempt to get to the bottom of anything or diagnose what the actual issue is. They are volunteering their time to make people shut up, bow their head in shame and go away. I don't think this is what you want in an open source project.
    - lossyalgo 10mo ago
      That may be true to some extent but I am still often able to find some kind of answer, granted it's often just "NO, Apple doesn't do this".
    - zarzavat 10mo ago

ricardobeat 10mo ago

I have experienced the same, and still have no idea what is going on. Especially annoying when every app is likely to have single-key shortcuts which end up being accidentally triggered.

Zizizizz 10mo ago
Do you have Admin by Request on your machine (if its a company laptop). That was the culprit for me.

Zizizizz 10mo ago

I had this, it was our company's security software prompting an update (Admin by Request) that was getting hidden. An update to that software and the latest tahoe update seems to have resolved that issue.

fzeindl 10mo ago

That is incidentally one of the many papercuts that are widely accepted in Windows, but never were a problem on a mac. Don’t try to interact with a windows desktop while it is still booting up. Better to wait for everything to settle down, otherwise apps will constantly snatch away focus and your typing will go into random applications.

sumo89 10mo ago
I recently built a windows PC again for gaming. Haven't used one for years. Everything's fresh, loads of room on hard drives etc and still sometimes it'll just be weird and needs a reset. But it doesn't surprise me, it's sad we've come to tolerate that from the world's most popular OS.
- IrishTechie 10mo ago
  I have a Windows 11, macOS and Ubuntu Desktop VM that I alternate across throughout the week, I find I need to reset all three periodically to sort out random weirdness. It has more to do with which machine I've used most in the last few weeks not which OS is in-use in my experience.
  - mcny 10mo ago
    Familiarity might be the biggest differentiator. I switch between windows on my work computer and fedora gnome on my personal computer (and only interact with Debian server over ssh) so I am more at ease on Windows than I am with something like cachy OS and KDE.
  - lnenad 10mo ago
    I have the same setup, just Arch instead of ubuntu on my laptop and I very rarely have any issues (like maybe once per month) that require me to reboot.
    - tsimionescu 10mo ago
      Once every few weeks and once per month seem pretty much the exact same - and about in line with my own experience with Windows on my work machine.

shortercode 10mo ago

I looked into this and the issue is the inbuilt SecurityAgent briefly taking focus. For me I believe it’s related to some management setting our company has added not getting on with Tahoe.

mcv 10mo ago

My MacBook is corporate, and it's therefore loaded with a ton of corporate auto-update, VPN and apparently questionnaire software. Stuff pops up at the most annoying times. And sometimes, indeed it takes focus away from the thing I'm currently typing. Extremely annoying. But apparently Apple is not the only offender. Just as I was typing this (on Harmonic on Android), a popup popped up, ate a few of the characters I typed and disappeared again. No idea what it said. Why do people do this? Don't hijack let applications I didn't ask for hijack my input.

mgoetzke 10mo ago

Dont get me started on the number of times Signal/formerly Skype opened up a dialog in-the-midst of me typing and me accidentally accepting a call because i happened to write 'space' at that moment in time

phkahler 10mo ago

Tahoe made at least one undocumented change to timer events in the GUI. This resulted in a difficult to debug problem in solvespace. I suspect we were doing something "wrong" and had to correct it, but the fact remains they made a change to how some GUI events work and didn't tell anyone.

nkotov 10mo ago

By chance are you using any Logitech stuff? I have a similar issue and narrowed it down to one of the Logi Options taking focus away randomly.

crucialfelix 10mo ago

Do you have a logitech mouse? If so you need to reinstall the logi and/or G Hub apps. The cert changed and that's what's causing it to fail and keep grabbing focus away. Incredibly strange bug. https://support.logi.com/hc/en-us/articles/37493733117847-Options-and-G-HUB-macOS-Certificate-Issue https://support.logi.com/hc/en-us/articles/37493733117847-Op...

ljm 10mo ago

I updated to iPadOS 26 on my iPad Pro, opened Safari, and tried to log into a website. For some reason the full-screen keyboard didn't load, all I could get was a miniature thing that floated on the left part of the screen (like the two-handed layout but with the full keyboard in one half, like typing on an iPhone 5s). The memes about Steve Jobs turning in his grave are true. He would not have stood for slop like this for even a moment. Apple's quality game was miles higher back in the day. Even if they tried to do some kind of Snow Leopard maintenance release for all of their products, I don't think they could raise the bar on quality high enough in just a single release. They'd have to do it a few times with nothing new to show for it. This speaks nothing of the transition to MacOS looking more and more like a dysfunctional toy since Jony Ive left and Alan Dye took over. Tiger and Snow Leopard were the peak.

gizajob 10mo ago

If only Stevesie was still here to roll some heads :(

imbnwa 10mo ago

> One of the most annoying things after installing Tahoe for me, that for no good reason an ordinary app would randomly lose its focus. In the midst of my typing. So its not just me!

dijital 10mo ago

I've been troubleshooting this on and off since early December. There's a handy Python script here to show log which application is stealing focus: https://superuser.com/a/874314 https://superuser.com/a/874314 If you find it's SecurityAgent then you might be hitting this bug: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/807112 https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/807112 I suspect it's related to a JIT privilege management app my company uses.

mastazi 10mo ago

I had the same issue, and in my case it turned out it was caused by Logitech G Hub which was running in the background. I uninstalled it and did not experience the issue again. My suggestion is to check any background process that might be doing that.

Rastonbury 10mo ago

Oh decent timing, this happened to me first time today, I even looked down at the track pad to see if my hand was close enough to accidentally swipe it because I felt it wasn't