I’m using the “Focus follows mouse (mouse precedence)” activation policy, meaning essentially that moving the mouse onto a window will activate it (no click needed).
My gripe is with the behaviour of some popup menus, and is most easily reproducible with widgets in the panel bar. Say the Clipboard widget. And let’s say I have one window occupying the entire desktop. Assume this window is active and the mouse pointer is somewhere on that window. If I move the mouse to the widget icon, the window stays active and:
- Behaviour 1: right-click, then I get a popup menu (with my settings: “Clear history” and “Configure clipboard”), and the active window stays active. If I move the mouse back to somewhere on that window, the popup menu stays open.
- Behaviour 2: left-click, then I get a popup menu (with the clipboard history), and the active window loses focus. If I move the mouse back to it, the popup menu closes (and the window gains focus).
The issue with Behaviour 2 is that it makes browsing the popup menu quite a finicky affair, as you need to be careful not to move the mouse away from it. This is particularly true for more complex menus, such as the Audio Volume widget.
I understand that right-click seems to stay in the context of the Panel, while left-click seems to open a new context (that of the widget), hence taking the focus. But I wonder if there is a way to get Behaviour 1 on left-click as well.
I am not proficient enough to devise a solution. Is there a way to either:
- Make some applications (typically the widgets) “Hard to unfocus”, meaning they lose focus only when the user clicks somewhere else as opposed to hovers somewhere else.
- Or, as a workaround, deactivate activation altogether when the user presses some key while moving the mouse. Typically, the user would keep the Meta key, or whatever, down while browsing the menu to ensure it stays open. This would quickly become muscle memory.
Plasma 6.4.1 Wayland
Thanks