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Apps dropping to background??

Dimwhit

Dimwhit

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Apr 10, 2007
2,069
299
Hopefully I can explain this. For the last week or so, I've had an issue where I'll have an app window open (doesn't matter the app), and after about a second or two, it drops to the background, like it would if I were to click on the desktop. It doesn't hide, it just no longer becomes the main selected window. Make sense? Even if I'm working directly in the app. If I restart the computer, it clears up for a day or so, then the behavior starts again. Makes it pretty much impossible to do anything. I'm not sure if I'm explaining it well enough.

Anyone else having this problem? I haven't installed anything recently that I can think of.
 
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Reactions: Junichi
Junichi said:
When it happens, what app will be active instead of the app you are working on?
Click to expand...

No other app comes to the front. It really is as if I've clicked on the desktop behind it. I'm constantly having to re-click on the main window to do anything in it.
 
Normally, if you click on the desktop, Finder will be active.
Is that the case here?
The name of the currently active app is right next to the Apple button on the menu bar.
 
perhaps its because some notification trys to reach you but you turned it off so the finder being activated instead.

try turning off the notification entirely then see what happens
 
Junichi said:
Normally, if you click on the desktop, Finder will be active.
Is that the case here?
The name of the currently active app is right next to the Apple button on the menu bar.
Click to expand...

Ah, yeah. Wouldn't have made more sense if I just said the Finder comes to the forefront. :) I sometimes forget the Finder acts like an app in that regard.

airlied said:
perhaps its because some notification trys to reach you but you turned it off so the finder being activated instead.

try turning off the notification entirely then see what happens
Click to expand...

Definitely not notifications. It happens out of the blue, and constantly. The Finder becomes active. I click on a Safari window (or any app), two seconds later, back to the finder. Far as I know, I'm not doing anything to cause that switch to be happening.
 
Finder is like everything so I wouldn't be surprised if something user can't notice happened.
I don't think this solves the problem, but you could try using Safari in fullscreen and see if it switches to the desktop.
And probably you already tried, but in case you didn't you could launch mission control when it switches to Finder. Sometimes a window is not noticeable.
 
Good suggestion. I'll try that next time. It's isn't just Safari, though. It's whatever app I have open. But I'll give it a shot. Thanks.
 
So it did it again. The Finder isn't the app coming to the foreground. It's the same app. So in Safari, the window I'm working in seems to drop to the background, but I'm still in Safari, so it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the Finder. Mission Control didn't help any. I just have the one window in the app open. Does this with every app. I opened Activity Monitor to see if it showed something running that shouldn't, and it did it in that app, too. Very weird.
 
I'm having this exact problem right now, i installed Sierra yesterday on my Macbook Pro and soon after it was finished i got back to work on my art program (i'm a Digital artist, so all my work is on a computer of sorts) but after a few strokes of my pen it always seems to think that i've clicked out of the program, and as Dimwhit said above, the program isn't hidden or anything, it's still on the screen, but i have to click back onto the program to continue working again...
I have to say though, that this is also happening on my iMac which had Sierra installed on it the day before, which also has the same program installed on it (my iMac is my main computer and my Macbook Pro is for when i'm travelling, which is a lot of the time so i need this to work like it was before i updated) So i'm facing this problem on both of my computers, i can't really escape it.

It's a huge pain to work with and seems to only be happening with my art program, Manga Studio 5 (basically a photoshop-like program), when Chrome is open as well as the art program and Skype it always seems to switch to Chrome as being the open and active application, then i have to click back to the program, it never seems to do this when i'm on Chrome for more than a few minutes, and it doesn't do it with anything else as far as i know...


I've unchecked the boxes in Mission Control like most of what searching on Google has told me to do but it doesn't seem to have done anything.....Is there anything at all i can do to stop this from happening? It's becoming very hard to keep focused on work when it keeps doing this.
 
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