MacOS Focus and Raise

Hasantahir · August 17, 2022

Zotero for MacOS raises the window to the front whilst in focus. This behaviour is often desirable and conflicts with tools such as Autoraise and Yabai.

Since Zotero is based on Firefox, I observed similar issues in Firefox ESR 97. However, this undesired behaviour is not observed in Firefox nightly 106a.

Hope this can be fixed in Zotero soon.

Thanks

dstillman · August 17, 2022

I'm not sure what you mean here. Can you provide Steps to Reproduce?

Hasantahir · August 17, 2022

Thanks. Here are some steps to reproduce the issue:

On macOS, with Zotero and several other application windows open that are overlapping, I use Autoraise tool to bring an app in focus without raising it to the front by hovering the mouse in the to-be-focused window region.

Zotero (and Firefox ESR 97) doesn't respect this and when I hover the mouse into the Zotero window, I note that the window is brought to the top.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Install and start Autoraise as per the instructions at https://github.com/sbmpost/AutoRaise

2. Start Zotero and some other apps

3. Use ⌘ + ⇥ to ensure that Zotero is not at the top

4. Move the cursor in the region of the Zotero app

5. Rather than being in focus, Zotero comes out on top.

A screencast of the observed behaviour is here:
https://streamable.com/nsz8yg

Thanks

dstillman · August 17, 2022

Isn't the whole point of AutoRaise that it…automatically raises apps? Are you saying you've changed the 'delay' setting to prevent the raising?

In any case, we can't help with a third-party app, but a version of Zotero based on Firefox 102 ESR will be available later this year, so if it works in newer Firefox versions, it might work with that.

Hasantahir · August 17, 2022

Thanks. Yes, I have disabled the raise feature by setting the delay to 0. The name of the app is funny in the sense that it can actually not do what the title says.

A similar issue was raised at: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1707379. Hoping that it will be resolved in the upcoming version of Zotero.