Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. How can I find out which application is stealing focus in Vista? Ask Question. Asked 12 years, 2 months ago. Active 7 years, 7 months ago. Viewed 13k times. How can I track this bugger down so I can remove it? Improve this question. Bill Reardon Bill Reardon 2 2 gold badges 4 4 silver badges 14 14 bronze badges.
Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. EDIT: and, unlike some of the programs listed in this thread, it's freeware.
Romwell Romwell 3 3 bronze badges. No touchpad, it's a MS Natural keyboard. Failing that try alt-F4 which sends the close message to the window.
Matthew Lock Matthew Lock 4, 2 2 gold badges 33 33 silver badges 42 42 bronze badges. For me, it was Google talk, lab edition. That's some awesome Win32 magic. Daaaaaave Daaaaaave. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Yep definitely while gaming; was just on Apex and suddenly "something" stole focus and I had to quickly click back in I would've alt-tabbed, but I use an Autohotkey script to disable that so I don't accidentally do that while gaming, along with the Windows Keys.
No idea what but I suspect it was Steam's webhelper service as that had stolen focus in the past. I have a shortcut to run Steam without the browser, but then I can't access any store features. Not too bad. Mainly though would love an option to turn focus stealing off, or at least an easy way to identify which app it was that stole the focus!
This is my number 1 pet peeve with Windows. There are so many situations where this occurs. If it's not going to be fixed in Windows itself, then a switch in PowerToys would be the next best thing. Was playing some Apex and get a message from a workmate and boom. But yes typing and accidental triggering of dialogs just because they stole focus is a pain too especially when its something wanting to restart your computer such as after installing a program.
Left windows key gets unbound too. PowerToys actually has a Keyboard Manager to remap keys, have not tried it yet. Skip to content. Star New issue. Jump to bottom. Labels Idea-New PowerToy. Idea-New PowerToy.
Linked pull requests. Copy link. Pls bring back an option to disable focus stealing The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered:. I can't up-vote this enough! Aaron-Junker mentioned this issue Sep 4, Clean up PowerToys Ideas I go to desktop 2 Open photoshop Go to desktop 1 Photoshop appears on desktop 1 start writing this comment photoshop steals focus and appears on top I manually return to this comment Photoshop fully started on desktop 1.
This would be a multi-tasking dream. I too need a fix. Block Focus Stealing Community Bot 1. Tobias Kienzler Tobias Kienzler 5 5 silver badges 17 17 bronze badges. I mean, sure enough the "You are running out of Oxygen" warning should be very visible on an ISS terminal, but even then the "Which of the following sections 2 inhabited to evacuate first" input should not be shifted without user interaction Bad choice of wording To show an ad?
I'm kidding. Spotify does this and it's really annoying. BrianOrtiz It is indeed a shocking experience to once in a while browse the internet in general without adblock of course I deactivated it on SE though — Tobias Kienzler. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. I use it on my own machine, configured to force a 15 second break every 4 minutes. Improve this answer. Bevan Bevan 8, 3 3 gold badges 30 30 silver badges 41 41 bronze badges.
I wouldn't mind you including a link to OOSAlarm here found it though: nichesoftware. However it is, as you mentioned, a software specifically designed and then installed to catch focus while other software was not and yet does so.
I'd imagine ideally a software like yours would explicitly ask for an OS's "flow interruption privilege" upon installation and if denied or not even asked for the OS would simply ignore any attempts at focus stealing by that program. I didn't include a link in my original post because I felt it was off-topic - and that it might have been regarded poorly. Glad you found it though. Well, since the program is an answer to this question, it is kind of on-topic : But anyway, it's just two links through your profile away.
Maybe I should start using it actually No, there aren't any valid reasons for an app stealing focus I can think of. Inexplicably much to the displeasure of many that think their application is so important that they absolutely, positively, no other way about it, have to have the user's attention and have it now. MarjanVenema I must have missed the part where MS has gone the way of not allowing focus stealing - there's almost infinitely many programs stealing focus thanks to multiple mechanisms Windows provides for this well maybe not on purpose, but they definitely failed at prohibiting this — Tobias Kienzler.
MarjanVenema There's the problem - they shouldn't have made it possible to start with. And this is a "feature" that really doesn't need backwards compatibility. I understand there are people with the strong desire to do it anyway, but those are probably the same people that use rand rand rand time because "one rand alone isn't random enough", and ideally there shouldn't be a need to support their "products" Tobias: Of course they shouldn't have, but they didn't know or have the experience then that they do now.
Actually the feature does need backwards compatibility, because if MS wouldn't provide that, they would get blamed for the fact that a program stops functioning when users go to upgrade their Windows system. Hint: look for why Asp. Net MVC etc.
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