Notifications steal focus

[svandragt]

What Happened?

On X11 (classic sessions) on eOS8.1.2, notifications steal focus, due to the NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_NOTIFICATION atom was being set in a realize signal handler, which fires after the window is already visible. This creates a race where the window manager might assign focus to the bubble before seeing the notification window type hint.

base.show() still triggers focus on X11 if the window type isn't set.

Steps to Reproduce

1. login to the classic session

./build/src/io.elementary.notifications &
sleep 1

# Click into a terminal or text editor to make sure it has focus, then:
notify-send "Test 1" "Did this steal focus?"
sleep 2
notify-send "Test 2" "Still focused?"
sleep 2
notify-send "Test 3" "And this one?"

Expected Behavior

Notifications don't steal focus away from the active window.

OS Version

8.x (Circe)

OS Architecture

amd64 (on most hardwares)

Session Type

Secure Session (Wayland, This is the default), Classic Session (X11)

Software Version

Latest release (I have run all updates)

Log Output

Hardware Info

No response

[svandragt]

The patch, which I confirmed working, is to explicitly call realize() before show() so the atom is set synchronously, before the WM ever sees the window:

diff --git a/src/AbstractBubble.vala b/src/AbstractBubble.vala
index 197fe0b..4fc53c2 100644
--- a/src/AbstractBubble.vala
+++ b/src/AbstractBubble.vala
@@ -166,7 +166,9 @@ public class Notifications.AbstractBubble : Gtk.Window {
         }

         if (Gdk.Display.get_default () is Gdk.X11.Display) {
-            // Avoid present on X11 because it focuses the window
+            // Avoid present on X11 because it focuses the window
+            // Realize first so we can set the window type atom before the WM sees it
+            realize ();
             base.show ();
         } else {
             base.present ();

[danirabbit]

@svandragt can you submit this solution as a pull request please?

[svandragt]

I can’t I didn’t come up with it myself but I vouch for the code.