Lion cmd-tab doesn't bring the application windows to the foreground

Traveler42: Unfortunately, I'm working on a 2008 polycarb MacBook, which can't run MLion (it can run Lion, which I do). I guess that might make me the "old fashioned backwards"-type :S I don't remember having this issue on Snow Leopard, although downgrading is not something I'm keen on doing...

Neil Youngson: Good to hear that MLion fixes it! What you said is true: the focus (i.e. menu bar) does change, the window just doesn't appear (or is obscured by another app's window).

This is the answer that everyone has been looking for.

I thought focus was clear enough to mean "make my mouse enter data into the most recent application window".

I do not think focus means just selecting the menu bar but reasonbable people can disagree.

If you want a more precise way of saying this, switching back to the application with command tab occasionally does not "order front" the most recently used window of the application (coming from the X world).

I thought I was still seeing this with Mountain Lion but I am now using Witch bound to command tab.

That still has gotchas even in Mountain Lion but it does what I mean much more often.

If you haven't used it, Witch let's you switch between windows blind to which application they come from.

If you switch among multiple applications all the time, this becomes essential.

Well. I bought a brand new Mac with Mountain Lion 2 weeks ago, and also have this problem. I switch apps with CMD + TAB but sometimes they don't come to the foreground and I have to click on them. Very annoying.

For what it's worth, I'm on Mavericks and have been for some time...and while command-tab worked perfectly fine, in the past couple of days it has started exhibiting the behaviour described here...and this doesn't seem to be coincident with an update (10.9.1 installed in December), and I've certainly not changed any system preferences in the last few days...

Workaround: System Preferences -> Mission Control, uncheck "Displays have separate Spaces". Okay, you won't have a menu bar on every screen, and your Dock won't float between screens...but it's more preferable than Command-Tab not working properly.

Apple: It just works. Except when it doesn't.

Same problem here ... command tab, the shortcut for switching between open apps i've used every day for three years, suddenly, is no longer. Totally slowed my work flow, have to stop typing and use track pad to switch to another app to grab something. PIA ... macbook air 2011 -- no way I am reinstalling for this ... i push on with my hobbled machine.

Well, I suppose I should have done tis first, but trashing the finder plists fixed my problem ... !

Trashing plists didn't do it for me 😟

Chiming in that on Yosemite this bug still exists.

I know it's a bug because I will (for example) switch from Safari to TextWrangler with cmd-tab. Then I'l hit cmd-tab again, but it will take me to some random space with no Safari windows, even though Safari is open full screen in its own space. Then if I hit cmd-tab a couple times to toggle back and forth, eventually it figures it out and gets me to the right space.

Occasionally I hit cmd-tab and it jumps to a random wrong space, but then about 2 seconds later (without any other input from me!) jumps to the correct space.

I have noticed this for a long time but only just bothered to search on it. It's kind of unbelievable that such a small but annoying bug has gone unaddressed for so many years, even through iterations of serious overhauls of Spaces behavior! This thread started almost four years ago!

I have a macbook that had disk wiped off, and brand new Mavericks installed at the Apple store, because i did not want Yosemite (on purpose). The machine was barely used for about a month or less, when it started exhibiting the problem described in this thread. Cmd+tab will show me the list of icons/apps, and when i switch to another app, it will only change the MENU bar at top, but the window will not change (even though i have separate desktops for these apps). Changing options in mission control, as suggested by some here did not work. I think there is definitely a bug that may be hard to reproduce consistently, and this has not been brought to the attention of Apple engineers after so many years ?? I am surprised.