Gnome 3 and my favorite window focus and raise behavior

Yesterday night I installed Fedora 15 Alpha to see and test the gnome-shell (gnome 3) improvements. I stopped to test for one reason: I was not able to setup my favorite behavior for window's focus. What I like (this is mandatory, that's also the one major reason why I don't use Mac OSX daily) is that the focus follows the mouse but doesn't raises the window ! After having "googled" a bit, I tried to install gnome-tweak-tool... but it didn't help for this task... :( The solution is to use gconf-editor and changing the default value (click) of /apps/metacity/general/focus_mode to sloppy. Now I'm very happy and I can continue my tests of Gnome 3.

Yesterday night I installed Fedora 15 Alpha to see and test the gnome-shell (gnome 3) improvements.

I stopped to test for one reason: I was not able to setup my favorite behavior for window’s focus.

What I like (this is mandatory, that’s also the one major reason why I don’t use Mac OSX daily) is that the focus follows the mouse but doesn’t raises the window !

After having “googled” a bit, I tried to install gnome-tweak-tool… but it didn’t help for this task… 🙁

The solution is to use gconf-editor and changing the default value (click) of /apps/metacity/general/focus_mode to sloppy.

Now I’m very happy and I can continue my tests of Gnome 3.

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13 Comments

  1. Try alttabbing with sloppy focus enabled. It will focus the selected window and then immediately focus the window that’s under the mouse pointer. I find it hard to work without sloppy focus, but a nonfunctional alttab is no less problematic, so I’ve switched to XFCE for the moment…

  2. I am a bit puzzled here.

    Does Gnome 3 use Metacity as window manager?

    The reason I am asking is of course because Metacity can do really Sloppy Focus with “Don’t raise windows on click” AND a really cool feature is that it can remember the order of stacked windows =)

    Like you I need Sloppy Focus before I switch to Gnome 3.

    So does Gnome 3 really use Metacity?

  3. You just need to uncheck

    /apps/metacity/general/auto_raise

    then, “mouse” or “sloppy” will work as desired.

  4. – install gconf-editor:
    sudo apt-get install gconf-editor

    – open gconf-editor

    – under apps->metacity->general
    there is an auto_raise option; turn this off

  5. The focus and raise settings are straight forward. It is not a mere tweak but a setting. Like You, I don’t use Mac OSX because of its lack of functionality. The ability to click in a windows without raising it and the ability to give focus to a window just by putting the mouse over it are a combination of features that is sine qua none.

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