Let newly created emacsclient window auto focused

[robotechdy]

Firstly, thanks for providing the emacs-plus. I installed it on my Intel Mac, M1 Mac. They all work very well. I can start the emacs service with emacs --daemon or brew services start emacs-plus@29. Then, I can quickly open any number of client windows with emacsclient -c. Every emacs client window is GUI enabled -- nice!

There is one minor issue that bothers me: when I use emacsclient -c to open a new client window, the emacs client window is not auto-focused. I need to manually focus on the newly created window (with a keyboard shortcut or mouse click). I tried to start emacsclient -c with Raycast or as a shortcut in /Applications, still cannot make the newly created emacsclient window auto-focused.

[robotechdy]

@d12frosted Any suggestion? :)

[d12frosted]

Unfortunately, no immediate ideas. I need to investigate, but I am short on free time 🥲

A few seemingly relevant questions:

• does it happen in a single space, or do you use multiple spaces? Just curious if the new window (in macos terms) is focused when you open it the same space as other emacs windows.
• same about monitors

I have some directions:

• check macos system settings with regards to spaces or new windows. I am in the car atm, so can't check the proper name
• check if yabai can help with focusing new emacs windows;

Sorry, not very helpful.

P. S. Please keep us posted 🙏

[robotechdy]

@d12frosted for "space", do you mean virtual desktop? I have multiple virtual desktops.
For monitors, I only turn on one monitor.

[robotechdy]

I installed and configured hammerspoon to implement an auto-focus feature. Following the steps below, anyone can have this feature.

1. Install hammerspoon with brew install hammerspoon. Then, make sure your Mac allow it running in background.
2. Open .hammerspoon/init.lua, and copy the code below into it.

-- Importing necessary modules from Hammerspoon
local application = require 'hs.application'
local window = require 'hs.window'

-- Setting up a filter for Emacs windows
emacsFilter = hs.window.filter.new('Emacs')

-- Function to focus on the newest Emacs window
function focusNewEmacsWindow()
    -- Getting all Emacs windows, sorted by the time they were created (newest first)
    local windows = emacsFilter:getWindows(hs.window.filter.sortByCreatedLast)
    -- If there are any Emacs windows, focus on the newest one
    if #windows > 0 then
        windows[1]:focus()
    end
end

-- Subscribing to window creation events for Emacs windows
-- Calls focusNewEmacsWindow function each time a new Emacs window is created
emacsFilter:subscribe(hs.window.filter.windowCreated, focusNewEmacsWindow)

3. Restart the hammerspoon. Then, whenever you create a new emacs client with emacsclient -c, it is automatically focused.

Here above is a bypass solution.
@d12frosted Wish we could have a native built-in solution in the future. :)