Strange window focus behavior with Ubuntu 15.10 and Gnome

Question

I am running Ubuntu 15.10 and ubuntu-gnome-desktop. Since the upgrade from 15.04 I have noticed that when I double click a window, that window seems to take focus (e.g., the gnome top bar text and icon change to that of the application whose window was clicked), but for all intents and purposes it does not have focus - text is still typed in the previous application, etc.

The only way I have found to really make an application take focus, is to click the title bar of the application. I am assuming this is a configuration/settings issue, but I have not been able to fix it in the gnome-tweak-tool or in the settings menu.

Is this a bug, the new intended behavior in 15.10, or just a setting I need to adjust? Thank you!

Answer 1

I believe I have a similar issue with Unity on Ubuntu 15.10. I found that running the unity-tweak-tool and setting auto raise to on and focus mode to "mouse" gets me the behavior I want. I suspect you can skip the auto raise if you don't like it, but the focus set at "click" is what seems to be causing the issue for me and "mouse" works as I'd expect.

Answer 2

Issue happens if you set Window Action Key to None in the Windows section of the Tweak Tool application.

Basic solution

Set Window Action Key option to Super or Alt

Answer 3

I'm having a similar issue with ubuntuGnome 15.10, I've solved it with the next steps:

1. Install dconf-editor, using:

   sudo apt-get install dconf-tools
   

2. Then run it:

   dconf-editor
   

3. Navigate to:

   org / gnome / desktop / wm / preferences
   

4. Check the option:

   raise-on-click
   

That's it!