Window Focus

[TypeWriter]

Does anybody know how to get a message or trigger events based on a window coming into focus?

I can trigger an event based on a component being focused by a mouse down on the component, but not the component window.

So if I am shuffling around open windows by the title bar of the ui, my UI components have no clue if their window was the last selected or focused on an operating system level.

I’ve tried, showing, keyboard focus, as well as grabbing the window handle, and comparing mouse positions on a timer (sort of works) , but I can’t seem to distinguish between local windows within a process such as a DAW.

Maybe some sort of operating system relative z order through the component peer or tope level window?

There’s got to be a something deep in the depths of the juce framework for this.
If anyone has any ideas or a good direction to try, please let me know.

Thanks,

[stephenk]

I have wrestled with this kind of thing as well. Are you talking about inside a plugin?

Is it impossible to know when your plugin is brought to the front or gains focus?

It would seem so. AudioProcessorEditor::broughtToFront() (inherited from Component) - never called AudioProcessorEditor::focusGained() (inherited from Component) - never called Am I missing anything?

[TypeWriter]

Yessir, thanks for linking that forum I didn’t see that one. This is a rabbit hole for sure.

Have you found any functions that work?
I feel like I’ve tested almost everything I can think of.

I found this code from this thread, some what effective.

Dismiss PopupMenu when focus changes

yes, the bounds would be constrained by the parent comp. otherwise, regarding the dismiss when the window is moving I used a code like that in the past (a bit hacky, but that should work) : void timerCallback() override { if (topComp == nullptr) topComp = pluginEditor->getTopLevelComponent(); if (topComp != nullptr) { if (ComponentPeer* peer = topComp->getPeer()) { const Point<float> point = peer->localToGlobal (Point<float>()); if…

        auto topComp = this->getTopLevelComponent();

        if (topComp != nullptr)
        {
            ComponentPeer* peer = topComp->getPeer();
            if (peer)
            {
                const Point<float> point = peer->localToGlobal (Point<float>());

                if (point != previousPoint)
                {
                    grabKeyboardFocus();
                    previousPoint = point;
                    DBG("changed");
                }

             
            }
        }


            if(this->getTopLevelComponent()->hasKeyboardFocus(true)){
                std::cout << "focus gained by " + juce::String((int)localID) << std::endl;
            }else{
                std::cout << "focus lost by " + juce::String((int)localID) << std::endl;
            }

[stephenk]

I have not tried that approach; what I have at the moment is something like this, which may not be applicable to what you want to accomplish:

Keyboard focus when opening a plugin in the DAW

I’ve been experimenting with the following approach. I can’t say it is extensively tested in many hosts because I haven’t released anything yet. But I was having the same problem, and I want my MainComponent to grab focus when the plugin window is first shown. The idea is: When the MainComponent is created, instantiate a Timer class that checks periodically (i.e. once per second) for the window being the frontmost process, and then focuses the MainComponent, after which it stops the timer callb…

[TypeWriter]

I’ve found juce::Process::isForegroundProcess() will return true as long as the DAW is selected.

I’m going to try a few more things, I’ll post here with what I find.

I’m going to try and wrap that process, maybe the one I shared, and then testing the top left pixel and bottom right pixel of the desktop’s component location.