Window focus not working properly

[adielhercules]

I have a bad habit of some times using the Dock or cmd + tab to change window / app and I noticed an issue...

Issue:
Using macOS window switcher / Dock to change app, I've noticed that omni does some not work, in the workspace menu it seems like I actually switched to the new window / app but in reality it did not.

Workarounds?
I can press any omni hotkey to go right and left and then it recovers.

Let me know if you need more details

[BarutSRB]

@adielhercules Native Cmd+Tab will not be implemented. A custom and much better alternative will be added after full multi-monitor support and also an Overview/Exposé Niri style will be added. This will likely use the Metal framework, though I may instead decide to build in Rust using Bevy engine.

As for the Dock, that is still undecided.

In the meantime, you have two alternatives to using Cmd+Tab for navigation.

First, you can use the window finder/jumper feature. This opens a popup window with a list of all open windows, allows fuzzy searching by app name or window title bar words, and lets you jump directly to and focus any window. Second, you can click an app’s window icon in the workspace top bar to switch directly to that window and bring it into focus.

[adielhercules]

@adielhercules Native Cmd+Tab will not be implemented.
Fair enough, completely understand if native Cmd+Tab integration won’t be implemented.

Out of curiosity, is this mostly a technical limitation on macOS (e.g. macOS reserving Cmd+Tab behavior at a system level and not exposing reliable APIs to override it), or is it a design choice to keep OmniWM fully in control of its own window‑switching model?

I know that the macOS App Switcher interacts quite deeply with the WindowServer and doesn’t always emit consistent focus events to third‑party tools, so I’m wondering if the behavior I’m seeing (workspace UI updates, but actual focus doesn’t change) might be related to that.

A custom and much better alternative will be added after full multi-monitor support and also an Overview/Exposé Niri style will be added. This will likely use the Metal framework, though I may instead decide to build in Rust using Bevy engine.

This sounds amazing. Really excited to see where that goes once multi‑monitor support is completed.

In the meantime, you have two alternatives to using Cmd+Tab for navigation.

First, you can use the window finder/jumper feature. This opens a popup window with a list of all open windows, allows fuzzy searching by app name or window title bar words, and lets you jump directly to and focus any window. Second, you can click an app’s window icon in the workspace top bar to switch directly to that window and bring it into focus.

The window finder/jumper and the workspace top‑bar icons work well enough for me in practice. 👍

Still, I wanted to document the issue because when relying on macOS' built‑in window navigation (Dock or Cmd+Tab), OmniWM currently appears to:

• update the workspace menu as if the switch occurred
• but does not actually change window focus
• until an OmniWM action is triggered (e.g. moving left/right, toggling a workspace, etc.)

This makes it seem like the "state" inside OmniWM and macOS gets out of sync temporarily.

Not a blocker at all, mainly something that might help polish the interaction model later on.

Happy to provide logs, testing, or recordings if that helps!

[BarutSRB]

@adielhercules in all honesty I haven't looked that far into cmd+tab yet to know if there are macOS api limitations or if simply Omni needs a fix, the reason being is that I find native macOS cmd+tab very ugly to use and I can't believe that I am saying this but Windows one is way better.

Never the less even if there were limitations with native one it could still natively work with Omni just in a weirdly creative way, what comes off my head is tracking amount of times cmd+tab is pressed to know which window should be target, unless api provides this, but I simply don't use cmd+tab so I'd need to look at how it decided left to right order etc...

When the time comes I'll definitely be able to give you a better answer but currently with a finite free time I have, I'm focusing it all into multi-monitor support.

Sorry if this doesn't provide the answer you expected 😔

[adielhercules]

@adielhercules in all honesty I haven't looked that far into cmd+tab yet to know if there are macOS api limitations or if simply Omni needs a fix, the reason being is that I find native macOS cmd+tab very ugly to use and I can't believe that I am saying this but Windows one is way better.

Never the less even if there were limitations with native one it could still natively work with Omni just in a weirdly creative way, what comes off my head is tracking amount of times cmd+tab is pressed to know which window should be target, unless api provides this, but I simply don't use cmd+tab so I'd need to look at how it decided left to right order etc...

When the time comes I'll definitely be able to give you a better answer but currently with a finite free time I have, I'm focusing it all into multi-monitor support.

Sorry if this doesn't provide the answer you expected 😔

This a fair and clear answer, thank you for taking the time to build such an amazing tool