After installing Mavericks, my active window won't remain active. Whether typing in an active window or not, within 10 seconds the active window become inactive and I have to mouse click to activate and within 10 seconds it will deactivate again, constantly.
Using iMac, 12 GB RAM, added SSD last year. Those are the only things that are unique about my iMac.
iMac (27-inch Mid 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9)
Just spent my entire day w/ the same problem, but I have it fixed now. I just want to "Pay it Forward". Finding a fix for this is like a needle in a haystack,, but through my 7 hrs of research,, only ONE thread out of Very Many gave me an idea of what to check.
-Turns out, there was an application in the background that kept Crashing every 10-15 sec. Every time it either crashed or tried to start again, it took the computers attention away from my current window and on to IT. The Post I read said that in their case, it was an Auto Backup program of some type.
In my case, it turned out to be the same thing. An Auto Backup program from Cox communications. To find what's troubling your computer,
1. close all your Apps
2. Open Activity Monitor
3. Sort columns by CPU
4.Keep a watchful eye for what keeps starting & Crashing
5. Double click on it or try to open it any way you can (Immediately while it is trying to open) and work on getting it DELETED or Uninstalled
a. Before you delete it, you can also try "ForceQuit" first to see if that helps. In my case, It kept re-opening even after Force Quit, but Uninstall worked
perfect. With this info, you can at least walk in to any Genius Bar @ Apple store and give them a huge head start on the problem, IF you are unable to complete the task.
I hope this helps! There's hardly any information to find on this problem, so SHARING this info in another thread or elsewhere would be a thoughtful thing to do. ..
Safari was my culprit !!
Unfortunately, I don't have a solution, but wanted to mention that I am having the same exact issue. It is quite annoying as I can't even finish typing this sentence without having to use the mouse to make this window active. It is affecting every window this morning (safari, mail, chrome). This issue started after my Mavericks install.
Using MBP Retina 15" mid-2013 with Mavericks 10.9 (2.7GHz i7 16GB RAM and SSD)
After calling Apple Support, an SMC Reset reboot resolved the issue. I hope this resolves it for others who may have the same problem.
After spending about 7 hours with 4 different Apple tech support personnel, including having the issue escalated to senior level technicians, my problem would occasionally stop occurring, but soon re-occur !! Very, very frustrating.
I finally brought my iMac to a Genius, and he was able to drill down to the problem that was affecting my Mac. I don't know if this will be the same "right" fix for others, but it has definitely and finally fixed my problem. I cannot explain this, because I don't understand the technical explanation I was provided, but he found there was something that was downloaded from a 3rd party application that conflicted with Mavericks. He prepared the following explanation for me to share on this forum, hoping it will help others find/fix their similar problem:
"It appears the issue is related to a third party tool “OnlineBackupd”, which had a binary application under /usr/local/bin and a LaunchAgent script at /Library/LaunchAgents.
Checking Console.app (/Applications/Console.app) reveals that the OnlineBackupd app is crashing every 10 seconds, un-focusing whatever window was currently in-focus.
Removing the two aforementioned files and restarting the computer will do the trick."
I hope this helps you, or someone else, fix their similar problem.
Thanks for posting the update because despite my prevoius post about an SMC reset resolving the issue, the problem arose again the next day. After a few more calls to Apple Support they have also chosen to send me to the Genius bar suspecting a hardware issue (which I doubt). I have an appointment tomorrrow morning. Reading what your Genius rep described, I too see "OnlineBackupd" in console crashing now and then. I'll show what you posted to the Genius bar tomorrow. May I ask what online backup software you use to see if I have the same one conflicting with my Maverick's installation? I use Carbon Copy Cloner and also Cox Online Secure Backup. Thanks again for posting the follow-up.
I was also told it was likely a hardware issue, but it was NOT. Like your experience, earlier efforts seemed to temporarily fix the problem, but it came back. This time, with the "fix" from the Genius, it has not reoccurred and it has been working fine for several days.
I believe, at one time, I did attempt to use an online backup system that was being offered free by my local ISP (Charter Communications) which is probably using the same s/w as your Cox Online Secure Backup service !!
Hope this helps. And, be sure to bring the specific instructions I posted for your Genius to review. His process steps should help the Genius get to the offending software/app and eliminate it. Good luck. IT sure worked for me!
Very Good! I had the Charter Communication Could Drive application. I uninstalled and the widow deactivation stopped! It appears the Charter application has an issue.
George and Cincy, thanks again. After visiting the Genius bar, they confirmed that the backup daemon (onlinebackupd) was running in the background, crashing, and stealing focus away from the active window to itself making the active window not active. I uninstalled the Cox Online Secure Backup software and it has eliminated the issue so far. I'll have to watch to see if it lasts permanently. If so, I am guessing that Charter and Cox might use the same 3rd party software provider for their cloud backup service. I actually have a phone number for that 3rd party provider and might call them up directly to ask about this. Hopefully they will provide an update that is compatible with Mavericks. In the meantime, I'll have to go back to using Time Machine for regular backups.
Thanks so much for sharing your experience. I had the same problem since I installed Mavericks on my MacBook Pro, and it was driving me crazy. I followed your instructions, deleted the two files, and the problem is gone, hopefully for good. Thank you, thank you!
I had the same problem, the active window flashed every 10 seonds.
I used CONSOLE and found that "com.microsoft.SyncServicesAgent" was crashing and restarting every 9 seconds. This is one of the compenents of Microsoft Office 2011. I uninstall Office and rebooted. No more flashing.
Thanks for the tip!
George and Cindy. Thank You!!! This problem has been driving me crazy ever since I upgraded to Mavericks. After reading your post, I realized that I had an old version of Charter's on-line backup software installed (it never worked, so I forgot about it). I opened the software, clicked "uninstall," and the constant active-screen-deactivation problem stopped immediately. Lifesaver!!!
I can't speak for Charter, but I just uninstalled my Cox online backup and the problem went away.
Sometimes have the same thing happen here. Here are some of the places I've noticed the OS being confused about which window is active:
in Preview if I am annotating/editing several images and I go to "undo" things I've done to one image, I will see it instead "undoing" what I did to the other image. There was one time it "undid" something that I didn't do to either image (it rotated the image when it had been only cropped, not rotated). That caused my entire computer to lock up and give me the spinning rainbow wheel, I ended up many minutes later having to do a hard shutdown via the power button in order to get out of it.
I also have had it do this in GIMP which i only use sparingly. When I open a save or export dialog window, certain keys will apply to the main window behind the dialog window and certain of them will apply to the dialog window. So this prohibits me from entering the filename that I want, many times.
Sometimes when surfing (or switching windows) my cursor disappears and won't appear over the active window. I end up having to go to my hot corner that shows me the desktop and moves all the windows out of the way, clicking on the desktop, and then going to the same hot corner to pull the windows back and then going to the window that I wanted.
I had the same problem. I could hear the disk working, so I ran Activity Monitor. The apps launchd, kernel_task, and mds_stores were writing to the disk; and mdworker, mds, and kernel_task were reading from the disk. When these apps run they do not have windows, so it looks like the active window just deactivates with no other windows in the background. The problem would go away in about 20 minutes. As best as I can tell, these apps were optimizing files after logging in or waking from sleep. I stopped logging in/out and going to sleep, and the problem has not recurred.
If you have this problem, try running Activity Monitor and see what else is hogging disk or CPU usage.
This solved my question.
Thank you very much. My windows stay active and I can type without interruptions. You've made my day!
P.S. I don't know how to apply the "this solved my question" or "this helped me" icons, but I'd gladly give you the 10 points.
Active window deactivates
