How to skip the "Is ready" notification and directly open apps in Ubuntu 20.04?

Question

On Ubuntu Focal Fossa 20.04, for most of the apps, for example by searching for VeraCrypt and pressing Enter, Ubuntu displays a notification at the top of my screen which says something like "VeraCrypt is ready". I have to click on this notification so that the app I wanted to open comes to the foreground. Is there a way to change this default behavior?

The notification replaces an older behavior. That older behavior, commonly called "window-stealing,' was a common source of user confusion and complaints. — user535733, Oct 23 '20 at 12:35
@user535733 Why didn't Ubuntu just change that behavior by only allowing applications that were manually opened by the user to be focused? — Thomas, Oct 23 '20 at 19:58
Ubuntu did not change the behavior. Gnome did. Feel free to ask the Gnome developers (whom we are not). — user535733, Oct 23 '20 at 20:57
Does this answer your question? Gnome Shell: Move windows to front on launch (No more "... is ready to use" notifications) — Flimm, Nov 04 '23 at 07:19
I had this behavior on Ubuntu 20.04 because one of my terminal window was set with option Always on Top — Anton Samokat, Apr 28 '24 at 16:20
@Flimm Literally none of the answers to the question you link to (a) disables the notification, and (b) giving focus to newly launched apps on 24.04. — Lexible, Jan 08 '25 at 18:30

Yusuf · Answer 1 · 2022-10-26T16:31:39.397

24

Windows is Ready - Notification Remover <-- only removes notification, does not focus the open window

Focus my window <-- incompatible

Here, this works best on Ubuntu 22.04

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/5410/grand-theft-focus/

edited Oct 26 '22 at 16:31

answered Oct 26 '22 at 16:30

Yusuf

349

Grand Theft Focus worked for me. I didn't test the others because of this answer. I used the NoAnnoyance extension initially but it didn't seem to work on 22.04. – Rafael Eyng Jan 01 '23 at 22:34
This is more maintained than "Focus my window" ("Focus my window" does not work is 43). – Ahmad Ismail Aug 12 '23 at 18:36
1

This should be the accepted answer @pLumo – Orwellian Mentat Nov 15 '23 at 10:04
sudo apt-get install chrome-gnome-shell . 2. open https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/5410/grand-theft-focus/ , and install the chrome extension if not yet. 3. click install on the site, then it should work. (it worked on my ubuntu 22.04.3)

Eric

Dec 11 '23 at 04:02

pLumo · Accepted Answer · 2024-04-28T16:50:56.240

16

There are some Gnome extensions that do exactly that:

edited Apr 28 '24 at 16:50

answered Oct 23 '20 at 10:12

pLumo

28,011
2
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Focus my window extension is not available by the link: 404 - Page not Found We couldn't find the page you were looking for, /extension/1005/focus-my-window/ – Anton Samokat Apr 28 '24 at 16:21
1

thanks, seems unavailable now, I changed to another one i found. – pLumo Apr 28 '24 at 16:51

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 22 '25 at 23:19

0

Another solution (tested on Ubuntu 24.04) which I don't see mentioned here is changing a setting using dconf-editor. Install it with: sudo apt install dconf-editor

Open dconf editor and search for /org/gnome/desktop/wm/preferences/focus-new-windows. Uncheck use default value and set it to 'strict' instead of the default 'smart'.

answered Jan 22 '25 at 23:19

Vik

71

"strict" does the opposite, from the description: “smart” applies the user’s normal focus mode, and “strict” results in new windows not being given focus automatically. There is currently no option here to allow apps to take focus. – Razzi Abuissa Jul 11 '25 at 17:29

How to skip the "Is ready" notification and directly open apps in Ubuntu 20.04?

3 Answers3

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