ui.active_window() sometimes returns the wrong windows

[phillco]

I'm on beta 454, but I've noticed this for a while, most commonly (exclusively?) on JetBrains IDEs. After pushing ctrl-` to rotate windows, ui.active_window() will sometimes return the wrong (old), one. I notice this most frequently when using keyboard shortcuts to snap windows.

In testing, I noticed ui.focused_element().AXWindow does return the right one, so for now I can work around by writing an action that will compare the AXTitle of those two, and if they differ searching through ui.active_app().windows() to find the right one.

[phillco]

Correction: haven't tried this on 460 yet, will report back if it still happens there.

[lunixbochs]

Can you retest on -468?

[phillco]

Just for clarity, still seeing this on 496, in JetBrains. I've also noticed ui.active_window().title can also be stale even if the active window is correct. I've added some overrides for JetBrains specifically to work around this for now.

[phillco]

I unfortunately do continue to see this on recent betas, although it's less common than before your ~46x fixes.

I'll retest on the newly released 2022.2 though, as that version brings in a large JVM upgrade which I imagine brings in a lot of new Swing behavior.

[rntz]

I believe I have observed this on mac ventura, in my case with firefox.

[rntz]

I now observe behavior that I believe to be due to this regularly. It's pretty annoying, a lot of my window management stuff now doesn't work reliably. Mac Ventura, talon 0.3.1-57, multiple apps (firefox, emacs, apple terminal). I'll let you know if I figure out a consistent repro.

symptoms possibly due to this:

• snap left/etc snapping the wrong window
• I have a command that opens an emacs window and tries to focus it by looking for a new window; sometimes fails to focus it (maybe this is a separate issue? maybe ui.apps() sometimes loses track of applications #513?)

[lunixbochs]

still just firefox?

[rntz]

No, multiple apps. Firefox, Apple Terminal, Emacs are the ones I think I've seen it on.

[rntz]

I made a little script that watches for ui.active_window() not agreeing with ui.focused_element() to see if I can catch it in the act and figure out how to repro consistently, but no hits yet: https://gist.github.com/f5771b6d2b303c4f1287379b27a9be9b

[lunixbochs]

Don't check it in the win_focus event, call this wherever you're triggering your window management code.

[rntz]

The script had way too many false positives so I turned it off a while ago. I think this was because terminal tabs are actually treated as windows somehow? Ugh. Bug is still occurring frequently and very frustrating. I've mostly been mixing keyboard/mouse use with talon use, maybe that has something to do with it. Gonna try instrumenting just the snap commands again.

[rntz]

Ok, I managed to actually catch an occurrence with the instrumentation on. I'm not sure what triggered it, but once it happened, switching between two different firefox windows on the same virtual desktop by clicking with the mouse did not update ui.active_window() (so it became incorrect whenever I clicked on the other window) but did update ui.focused_element().window correctly. Switching to another desktop, however, fixed the problem.

[lunixbochs]

firefox is kind of bad at accessibility events, talon already has several firefox specific workarounds in place

[rntz]

I've now observed similar behavior in Emacs. Emacs was focused but ui.active_window().title reported a title that I think didn't exist on any window, and consistent with this, "snap right" failed with UIErr: Could not get window rect.

Meanwhile, ui.focused_element().window.title reported the correct title, but ui.focused_element() had no AXWindow attribute (this seems to be standard for Emacs).

If I switched away from Emacs by clicking on an Apple Terminal window, then re-focused the Emacs window by clicking, the problem persisted. But, there was no problem with the Terminal window focused.

Does Talon's ability to determine which window is active depend on that application doing the right thing? That would be a bummer. This all worked quite reliably for me in Linux.

[david-tejada]

Is there any hope for this in Firefox? Any time I want to snap a recently focused window I have to first switch to another app and then switch back. win.title also doesn't update as you switch tabs. I have also observed this behavior in Windows.

[lunixbochs]

please retest on latest beta

[david-tejada]

The issue with Firefox is indeed fixed, at least for me. Thanks!

[nriley]

My issues are fixed too and I am joyfully removing a whole bunch of workarounds.

Thanks!

[phillco]

I can confirm:

• This reproduces on the old version 100%, with the realization that the problem is launching the bad app (IntelliJ/PyCharm for me) after Talon (thanks @david-tejada for the insight; can't believe I never noticed that before)
• This looks to be fixed for me (for those two apps; presumably, everything else as well) in the latest beta.