Alt-Tab and Focus-Follows-Mouse

 June 2nd, 2012
focus, tech
I have several terminals I leave in their own part of the screen. [1] I have focus follow the mouse [2], so to switch to one of these terminals I move the mouse. When I press alt-tab, it's never because I want to switch to or see these windows, it's because I want to bring up a hidden or partially obscured window. With focus-follows-mouse alt-tab should only affect windows that are stacked.

(Because in my case "non-overlapping windows" and "XTerms" are synonomous, I can set Compiz to do what I want by turning off alt-tab for XTerm windows. I like it a lot.)


[1] On my my desktop. On my laptop I run everything full-screen.

[2] When I move the mouse over a window and start typing, the text shows up in that window. The "focus" switches between windows based on mouse location. See

Comment via: google plus, facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Mindful posting

It is important, for the preservation of American democracy and maybe the world, that the Democrats take the House and Senate in November.

via Thing of Things September 18, 2026

There's no point at which turning your brain off will work

In early 2025, I started seeing people turn off their brain as they use LLMs1. They would have an LLM take an action (summarize text, write some code, etc.), and just assume that it worked2. This generally didn't work in early 2025 and the result was …

via Posts on September 18, 2026

My Weirdy Creatures

Over the last few days, I've been working on some little creatres. But they're very weird. I call them "weirdy creatures". I've made quite a lot of them, I think maybe 5-6, not sure. Weirdy Predator This is a weirdy predator. They'…

via Anna Wise's Blog Posts September 13, 2026

more     (via openring)