Window Focus issues with recent Sway versions (Regression?)

[LirionTen]

• Sway Version:
  1.11

• Debug Log:

  • Run sway -d 2> ~/sway.log from a TTY and upload it to a pastebin, such as gist.github.com.

I did and OOM-killer killed chromium and I lost all the incognito tabs. Thanks for that.

• Configuration File:
  repro provided, but focus_follows_mouse no if it matters

• Stack Trace:
  repro provided

• Description:

TL;DR: when I have obsidian open side-by-side with another application (call her FOO), if the FOO window has focus, and I merely hover the mouse over the obsidian window, it shows a blinking cursor as if it received focus, but key strokes go to another window.

Update: this also depends on what's running in the other window. chromium, gvim, and my terminal all exhibit this behaviour. Curiously, the blinking cursor doesn't happen when the window focus is on mupdf-gl (which uses freeglut for windowing).

I've opened a bug report on Obsidian forum, and users of other desktops can't reproduce it (Gnome/KDE/other wayland) . So I don't think it's an obsidian issue (neither does the obsidian forum)

and..... I've sporadically have been other issues with window focus in sway, but so far only as heizen-glitches I couldn't pin down. It began within the last year or so (not sure), so I suspect a regression introduced in a recent version.

The triggering scenario usually involves chromium side by side with another window, and switching in and out of full-screen on youtube. I end up in a state where one window shows a red title bar (indicating focus), but the keyboard input actually goes to another windows. Clicking on the window with focus doesn't do anything, keystrokes keep going to the other window. I have to click on another window to change focus, than click on FOO again, and only then is its shiny red title bar telling the truth when it implies that that keystrokes will actually go to FOO. But, I've been unable to reproduce this scenario reliably, but it's happened a dozen times over several months.

Since I can 100% reliably reproduce this similar glitch with the Obsidian appimage, I'm hoping devs will be able to as well, and that it'll boil down to the same bug.

Link to Obsidian Appimage (150MB-ish) . A new version just came out, but I've been using 1.9.12 so let's stick to that.

Cool moving graphics:

GVim on left, obsidian on right.

Showing:

1. Switching focus from one window to another.
2. How the blinking cursor in obsidian reacts to hovers, even when the focus is on another windows
3. keystrokes go to the focused window, not to obsidian - even though sway is somehow telling obsidian that it has focus.

Related #8919
Related #6967 (Thanks @Wielding)

[LirionTen]

a tripped circuit breaker, stubbed toe, and reboot later, and suddenly this behavior is gone. I have no idea what is/was. But given that I've experienced intermittent issues for months now, I supposed it''ll come back. Closing for now.

[LirionTen]

It went away, and now it's back again. I can't tell what causes it.

[Wielding]

I had responded in another similar report #6967 but this one is much newer. This has been happening to me recently running Sway master. I thought it was claude code running in my terminal that was causing it but it turns out it just stopped happening briefly and is now back regardless of the presence of claude code. I can't find a pattern to re-create it but several times a day I focus a window and it won't take my keyboard input. I have to switch focus back-and-forth to get it working again. This is happening on two different machines with almost identical installations. It stops happening if I move back to 1.10.

[LirionTen]

@Wielding, thank you for linking that issue, unfortunately I missed it.
Can you reliably reproduce #8919 as well?

[Wielding]

@LirionTen I can't reliably reproduce it. It seems to happen more often on another one of my machines that is in a different location and unavailable right now but that is about it.

[LirionTen]

@Wielding I'm confused. If it's unavailable right now, how did you check whether you can reliably reproduce #8919 with the steps detailed there?

[LirionTen]

Update: switching to a virtual console and back seems to make it go away.

It also seems to cure a third symptom of focus bugs in sway, where sometimes windows stop responding to clicks. This happens in particular with chromium's tab buttons.

Update 2: but not always.