Option to prevent windows from unfocusing while you're hovering over them

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Crigence
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Joined: Tue Mar 19, 2024 11:55 pm

Option to prevent windows from unfocusing while you're hovering over them

Post by Crigence »

I'm not sure if there's some software that can do this, or if there's another Linux desktop environment that has it or something better, or if there's a better place to suggest this at all, etc, but I had this idea and wanted to throw it somewhere out there anyway: An option to prevent windows from unfocusing while your mouse is hovering over them.

I'll use the incident that made me think of this as an example: Say that you're trying to minimize/restore/close a window as your computer is opening a new one that will take over the whole screen / focus and block those buttons. It's annoying to be trying to click a button like that only to get blocked by a new window. But if the window with those buttons would remain open since your cursor is over them instead, then you could just do whatever with that window, and then look at the new window's contents after. And even if you're trying to to access the new window and the old window you're hovering over is blocking it, hitting alt-tabbing is much faster then readjusting the mouse. Here's another way to look at it:
New window appears over button attempting to be clicked:
- Without feature enabled: Alt-tabbing back to window + clicking button = 2 actions of various speeds depending on how fast the user can hit the keys and readjust their mouse
- With feature enabled: New window appears behind current one, allowing button to be clicked = 1 action, no readjusting needed

Desired window opened with user input (Menu, taskbar, etc):
- Without feature enabled: No action. Desired window is already open
- With feature enabled: Depends on if clicking the menu and taskbar disable the feature

Desired window opened w/o user input, other window is hovered over:
- Without feature enabled: No action. Desired window is already open
- With feature enabled: Requires a single hit of alt-tab = 1 very fast action
TL;DR is that you're usually saving at least 1 action and therefore some time when you have this feature enabled, only losing time when a desired window opens w/o the menu or taskbar and therefore requires you to alt-tab to it, but I personally find hitting 2 keys on the keyboard to be much faster than having to do that *and* readjust my mouse. Anyways, sorry for the schizo rant, I'm just very conscious about how quickly I'm doing things on my computer, and I think this would be a great option assuming it's possible. Being speed-conscious is actually part of why I switched from Windows 10 to Linux Mint last month. I'm not a developer, just an active user, so I'd love to hear other opinions on this idea.
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