OS X Lion keeps changing focus window away from browser, why?

Question

OS X Lion keeps changing focus window away from browser, why?

Basically,

I just upgraded to Lion a day or two ago. I am finding that while I am typing in Firefox, the OS takes the focus out of the browser. So as I keep trying to type all I hear is a sound, (the sound that the keys I am pressing are invalid). This is very annoying, and I am not sliding my hand over the trackpad or anything like that. It seems to happen more when I am pausing for a second, and most importantly after pressing the enter key.

So my question is how to i disable this, or what the heck is going on. I never had this problem in Snow Leopard and to me is a huge inconvience.

My system is a MacBook Pro Jan 2011 Unibody, I really don't think more then that is relevant but I would be happy to submit it if it is.

Even in typing this it has happened more then five times in less then ten minutes. Any help is much appreciated.

Thank you,

Will Scardino

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.1)

Posted on Sep 12, 2011 3:13 PM

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Answer 1

iSpartan

Level 1

5 points

Sep 12, 2011 5:05 PM in response to Will Scardino

I am having this problem also. Really hoping for a fix. Been having it since I upgraded to Lion. Usually happens while I am typing. Super annoying.

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Answer 2

alisony

Level 1

0 points

Sep 12, 2011 6:54 PM in response to iSpartan

Same problem, especially in Mail, I'm typing a message and it keeps flicking me out of the message window into the general Mail window. Also having problems in the browser automatically switching to another active window. Help, please!

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Answer 3

Sep 14, 2011 4:31 AM in response to Will Scardino

I'm having the same problem. It's not happening all the time and during every session, but in my case it seem to be "activated" when I hit spacebar or backspace buttons while typing. Any ideas or solutions?

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Answer 4

Sep 25, 2011 10:38 AM in response to Will Scardino

Bump... so no one has found a solution... Pretty disconcerting I thought Apple was on top of things like useability... Don't think I'll be going for another upgrade of OS's...😠

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Answer 5

LTomas

Level 1

0 points

Oct 18, 2011 8:42 AM in response to Will Scardino

After weeks of frustration, I found another discussion that attributed this problem to Adobe Air (at least for me). Here's some more information:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3193284?start=0&tstart=0

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Answer 6

Feb 10, 2014 7:37 PM in response to Will Scardino

Hello fellow Mac users,

The root cause of this issue will be different for everyone as it’s usually some rogue app or process that isn’t working properly. In my case it was a Symantec utility called ‘SymUIAgent.app’.

Follow these steps to identify what specifically is causing the issue on your computer

Save the code on this file to your desktop using the filename id_issue.py: https://gist.github.com/iMerica/8928556/raw/73832a509de4dc5394cf1747b997ea1bd1b0 ff4e/identify_focus_issue.py
Open Terminal.app (Located in /Applications/Utilities)
In Terminal, cd to your Desktop using cd ~/Desktop
Run python id_issue.py and just let your computer sit for a few minutes (assuming the issue is happening within a few minutes/seconds).

Basically this code gets the current active window every three seconds and prints it as standard output which you can view in Terminal. Once you find the offending app, search on Google for specific steps on removing it.

I hope that helps!

Michael

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