Pressing Alt when launcher window has focus causes next input to be ignored

[mundifex]

This issue occurs regardless of whether the Alt key is still depressed when the next input is made, i.e. Alt, A or Alt+A both result in the 'a' input being ignored by the launcher window. I'm guessing this is due to keyboard focus being diverted to an invisible menu bar within the window, attempting to match the next character input with a menu mnemonic character.

This anomaly is especially jarring for a former Launchy user like myself since my hotkey_run is Alt+Space. When I invoke the Keypirinha window, I often begin inputting my query before my thumb has fully released the Alt key and the first character of my query is ignored/dropped. I've tested this same scenario in Launchy and the issue does not occur: input is properly passed along to the query field regardless of the state of the Alt modifier key (though Windows does make a 'Default Beep' sound, so maybe there's an error being caught and the input passed through as a fallback).

[polyvertex]

TL;DR: add that to your Keypirinha's config file:

[gui]
show_on_taskbar = no

Explanation: what you observe is standard behavior on Windows. The Alt key triggers the keyboard-only way to explore menus. You can confirm that by pressing Down after Alt, you will get window's system menu (i.e. Keypirinha does not create it, Windows does it).

In the case of Keypirinha, this system menu exists only when the window has to be shown on the task bar, which makes it a different type of window from Windows' stand point.

Also, AFAIK, Launchy does not have to deal with that problem because it does not have the equivalent of the show_on_taskbar option, which is a feature requested by Keypirinha users.

[mundifex]

show_on_taskbar = no solves the keyboard focus issue 😄 Thanks for the quick reply.

I'm noticing, however, that it doesn't solve the Alt-modified key chord problem, i.e. Alt+f doesn't pass f along to the query field. This is something Launchy seems to handle "correctly," albeit with the Windows 'Default Beep' sound accompanying each chord input.

[polyvertex]

Well then, glad it helps