Showing a space without passing focus to it.

[NylonDiamond]

I have a 3 monitor setup. I'm curious if there is a way to keep the focus on my middle monitor while viewing/showing different spaces on my other monitors (1 and 3). Every time I 'focus'/switch a space on a different monitor, they steal the focus. I just want a way to do a quick glance at other spaces without trying to figure out where my focus went. Maybe I'm missing a setting or something..

Thanks.

[dominiklohmann]

There isn't right now, but it should be trivial to set up a keybind that immediately switches focus back using yabai -m space --focus recent.

[NylonDiamond]

Okay, that's what I'm currently doing. Was just curious if there was a build in setting or something. Sometimes my keybind goes crazy and still loses focus. But it works okay for now. Thanks.

[koekeishiya]

There is no technical limitation that prevents this from being implemented. That said, surely there must be a better way to solve whatever issue you are having?

[NylonDiamond]

I just hate when I lose focus on an application. I would love it if there was ALWAYS focus on an application so I wouldn't have to click on something or run my launcher to select one when I lose focus. I wrote an ugly script that is doing this, I'll go ahead and post it here, but I'm no bash expert and it's pretty janky (demo gif above). It just makes sure something is focused at *all times. I have one script I use with SIP enabled and one with SIP disabled. This is the one with SIP Enabled (hence there are no 'space' queries and a .3 second timeout for the space switch animation to finish). ALL feedback is welcome, I know it sucks. Thanks!

# #!/bin/dash

# I press the Hyper key + 1-3 for switching spaces. Hyper + 1 will switch between spaces 1 & 2 for example.
# This script will make it so I *never lose focus on applications while switching spaces.
# If I have focus of window on display 1 and change spaces on display 2, i'll keep focus on display 1.
# If I have focus of window on display 1 and change spces on display 1, I'll check to see if there is any windows to focus on on display 1's next space, if there IS, i'll move foucs to it, else I'll move focus to any VISIBLE window on display's 2 or 3 in order to keep SOMETHING focused. If there is no visible windows on the new space or displays 2 and 3, Nothing will take focus, which is fine.
# If I have NOTHING focused and I change spaces, try to focus on ANY visible window on the new space. Else, try to focus on any visibe window on any visible space.
# the end.

# I call this script like this in skhd >> hyper - 3 : /path/to/thisScript.sh 3

inputKeyNumber=$1 # input argument : 1 - 3

CurrentlyFocusedWindow=$(yabai -m query --windows --window | jq -re ".")

CurrentlyFocusedWindowID=$(echo $CurrentlyFocusedWindow | jq -re ".id")

CurrentlyFocusedDisplay=$(echo $CurrentlyFocusedWindow | jq -re ".display")

CurrentlyVisibleSpaceNames=$(yabai -m query --spaces | jq -re ".[] | select(.visible == 1)" | jq -re ".label")

# my custom space names in yabairc:
#  yabai -m space 1 --label one
#  yabai -m space 2 --label two
#  yabai -m space 3 --label three
#  yabai -m space 4 --label four
#  yabai -m space 5 --label five
#  yabai -m space 6 --label six
case $inputKeyNumber in
'1')
    firstSpaceName='one'
    firstspacenumber='1'
    secondSpaceName='two'
    secondSpacenumber='2'
    ;;
'2')
    firstSpaceName='three'
    firstspacenumber='3'
    secondSpaceName='four'
    secondSpacenumber='4'
    ;;
'3')
    firstSpaceName='five'
    firstspacenumber='5'
    secondSpaceName='six'
    secondSpacenumber='6'
    ;;
esac

focusWindow() {                   # function
    sleep .3                      # Sip Enabled, waiting for stupid spaces animation to finish
    $(yabai -m window --focus $1) # $1 is the first argument passed in (window id).
}

focusDisplay() {                   # function
    sleep .3                       # Sip Enabled, waiting for stupid spaces animation to finish
    $(yabai -m display --focus $1) # $1 is the first argument passed in (window id).
}

TryFocusOnSpaceWereGoingToElseFocusOnAnyVisibleWindow() { # function
    # $1 space NAME we're going to
    # $2 space NUMBER we're going to 1-6
    # $3 space Name coming FROM
    # $4 space Number coming FROM 1-6
    windowOnNextSpace=$(yabai -m query --spaces --space $1 | jq -re '.["first-window"]') # is there an app on next space?
    if [[ "$windowOnNextSpace" -ne "0" ]]; then
        $(skhd -k "ctrl + alt + cmd - $2")
        focusWindow "$windowOnNextSpace"
    else # no app on new space
        newWindowToFocusIfPossible=$(yabai -m query --windows | jq -re ".[] | select((.visible == 1) and .space != $4).id" | head -n 1)
        if [[ -n "$newWindowToFocusIfPossible" ]]; then
            $(skhd -k "ctrl + alt + cmd - $2")
            focusWindow $newWindowToFocusIfPossible
        else
            $(skhd -k "ctrl + alt + cmd - $2")
        fi
    fi
}

if [[ $CurrentlyVisibleSpaceNames == *$firstSpaceName* ]]; then
    if [ -n ${CurrentlyFocusedWindowID} ]; then # (-n) >> != null
        if [ $CurrentlyFocusedDisplay -ne $inputKeyNumber ]; then
            $(skhd -k "ctrl + alt + cmd - $secondSpacenumber") # shortcut for changing spaces with SIP Enabled
            focusWindow $CurrentlyFocusedWindowID
        else
            TryFocusOnSpaceWereGoingToElseFocusOnAnyVisibleWindow $secondSpaceName $secondSpacenumber $firstSpaceName $firstspacenumber
        fi
    else
        TryFocusOnSpaceWereGoingToElseFocusOnAnyVisibleWindow $secondSpaceName $secondSpacenumber $firstSpaceName $firstspacenumber
    fi
elif [[ $CurrentlyVisibleSpaceNames == *$secondSpaceName* ]]; then
    if [ -n ${CurrentlyFocusedWindowID} ]; then # (-n) >> != null
        if [ $CurrentlyFocusedDisplay -ne $inputKeyNumber ]; then
            $(skhd -k "ctrl + alt + cmd - $firstspacenumber") # shortcut for changing spaces with SIP Enabled
            focusWindow $CurrentlyFocusedWindowID
        else
            TryFocusOnSpaceWereGoingToElseFocusOnAnyVisibleWindow $firstSpaceName $firstspacenumber $secondSpaceName $secondSpacenumber
        fi
    else
        TryFocusOnSpaceWereGoingToElseFocusOnAnyVisibleWindow $firstSpaceName $firstspacenumber $secondSpaceName $secondSpacenumber
    fi
fi