Intellij IDEA is missing from alt tab

[llowinge]

Describe the bug

Intellij IDEA closed; altab closed. First i open alttab, then i open intellij idea and it is not visible in alttab.

Screenshots / video

[llowinge]

Interesting fact is that if i open new window/workspace of Intellij IDEA, then i can see it in alttab, but the first window is still missing.

[lwouis]

Hi @llowinge! Thanks for sharing this issue!

What's your version of macOS? of AltTab? of Intellij (stable, EAP)?

I use Jetbrains products. I actually develop AltTab on AppCode. I've never experienced this issue you describe 😅

[llowinge]

Hi @lwouis, version of macOS: 10.15.7, AltTab: Version 6.15.1, Intellij IDEA: 2020.3.1 (Ultimate Edition).

[lwouis]

I'm on the same macOS and AltTab versions. I'm using Intellij IDEA Ultimate as well, daily. It's 2020.3.2 for me. I can't reproduce this issue.

How exactly do you launch IntelliJ? Through the Jetbrains Toolbox? Through the .app? Through the idea cli? Another way?

When it launches, does it open the last project automatically, or do you see the project selector UI?

A video of the issue may help here to see something you're doing that I'm not for instance 👍

[llowinge]

Hi, i'm attaching the video.

bug_alttab_small.mov

[lwouis]

Oh! The first window is fullscreen'ed automatically! That's an issue I've dealt with a lot in the past. Fullscreen windows are terrible to handle because they are on another Space. There is no public API to handle windows on other Spaces, so I use retro-engineered private APIs to do it. It's a lot of workarounds to get AltTab to handle these cases.

I'll see if I can reproduce. Most likely if the window wasn't fullscreen'ed when you launch IntelliJ, the issue wouldn't happen.

[llowinge]

@lwouis Thanks for heads up ! It looks you are right, because now it was working OK, but i had two windows opened (one of them went to fullscreen immediately and the second sticked on "main" space) and both windows appeared in AltTab. Then i closed the one which didn't go to fullscreen and closed whole IDEA, restarted alttab, run again IDEA and one window went to fullscreen and it was missing in alttab.

[lwouis]

I'm able to consistently reproduce this issue. Here are the steps:

• Open some project in IntelliJ (I think version doesn't matter)
• Fullscreen the window
• Quit IntelliJ
• Start AltTab
• Start IntelliJ
• IntelliJ goes through a sequence of: loading screen window, creates project window, fullscreens it
• AltTab doesn't list the fullscreen'ed window at this point

The issue is that AltTab tries to detect if the new window is tabbed during the OS animation of Spaces changing and the window going fullscreen. This results in AltTab detecting that the window is tabbed, and not showing it.

I've developed a workaround using a new private API called SLSManagedDisplayIsAnimating and retrying until the display has stopped animating. It is then safe to check if the window is a tab.

@llowinge could you please try out this local build with the fix, and share here if it's working for you?

[llowinge]

Hi @lwouis , finally i've found some time to test it, but it doesn't work even with the local build :( I did the same steps as you've described. But unfortunately i can't see the Intellij in the AltTab when in the fullscreen.