[TachyonicBytes]

I wonder if following the mouse for focus would be doable without disabling SIP. It's one of the features I didn't even see in other macOS WM.

[feep]

It is, Yabai can do it. I am currently using autoraise. Both work great, barring UI weirdness of macOS.

Example. Mousing over another window on the way to the menubar.

https://github.com/sbmpost/AutoRaise

[samatman]

The problem with focus-follows-mouse on macOS is the top menu bar.

If you had it, and tried to mouse to the menu, the menu would switch out from under you.

I have some notes in a file somewhere about how a Mac-native focus-follows-mouse could even work, because I want it. It would end up being a rather different implementation than the X Windows style.

[barnabee]

I have an Alfred workflow to search the menu, so not being able to move the mouse there isn’t a big issue.

[bashinator]

I've been searching for a sloppy-mouse-focus implementation for OSX for _years_. Pretty sure there's something fundamentally incompatible in how app windows are managed.

[speedgoose]

Looks like Hammerspoon and some lua should do:

https://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.mouse.html

https://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.window.html

[bashinator]

Not seeing a way to get the window currently under the mouse pointer, but this is pretty interesting - thanks!

[speedgoose]

You can get the positions of every windows, the position of the mouse pointer, and you can focus windows.

[bashinator]

This is really cool, I'm gonna try and implement it!

[lelandfe]

It's also a bummer because Terminal.app has the functionality out of the box: https://macos-defaults.com/mouse/focusfollowsmouse.html

[bashinator]

It can be implemented within apps, but not across apps afaict.

[jamil7]

Should be possible using AX APIs on mac, might not be all that performant, however.

[filereaper]

Yup there's AutoFocus which I use daily with Aerospace

https://github.com/synappser/AutoFocus