My open DOpus window randomly will steal focus and pop up in front of my active application. I've noticed this issue for the past 18 months or so. I just got a new laptop with a new build of Windows 11 and it is happening now even more than ever.
Evidently this is a known Microsoft issue.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/explorerexe-randomly-taking-focus-windows-11/b4099f38-d0b1-4c4f-af55-e87d21f55127
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/101a17g/file_explorer_stealing_focus/
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-11-most-recently-opened-explorer-window/26e097bd-1eba-4462-99bd-61597b5195a0
Some recommendations I've seen...
1.) Disable Windows search field on the taskbar
2.) Unpin DOpus from the quickstart bar
3.) Disable widgets
4.) Launch DOpus "in a separate process" (option only available through Windows Explorer)
5.) Registry edit: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\HungAppTimeout being set to a DWORD rather than a SZ. You can just delete HungAppTimeout and reboot your computer
(Terrible) workaround: Keep DOpus closed except when actively using a window.
Evidently Microsoft has acknowledged the bug:
There's an issue created in their Windows "Feedback Hub," too.
Event ID 1500 widely reported to coincide with the switch
I wanted to share this experience and what I learned, but even more importantly, I was wondering if anyone could recommend some troubleshooting steps to diagnose this (perhaps with the computer's event log?)
EDIT: I just launched Windows Explorer and left it up for a few hours. It didn't steal focus at all. So this problem, for me, is unique to DOpus.
EDIT 2: Some other people who have experienced this problem report success with this utility: GitHub - bladeSk/StayFocused: Prevents focus stealing on Windows
EDIT 3: I've been looking at the Task Manager and it appears that every time DOpus steals focus there is a surge in activity in the Windows Defender process "MsMpEng.exe" (aka Antimalware Service Executable). If there's some issue between Windows Defender and DOpus, is it possible to whitelist DOpus?
EDIT 4: If you search for "Virus & threat protection" > Manage settings > Add or remove exclusions, you can then add processes to be excluded. I added "dopus.exe" and "dopusrt.exe."
EDIT 5: Not sure if this is relevant, but the DOpus icon on my taskbar get a red translucent color over it when it tries to steal focus.
EDIT 6: I installed DOpus 12, chose NOT to use it as my explorer replacement or default choice for FTP and then I restored my settings from a DOpus 12 backup file. After restart the problem resurfaced.
EDIT 7: I uninstalled DOpus 12, reinstalled, chose NOT to use it as my explorer replacement or default choice for FTP (as in EDIT 6), but I decided not to restore my settings. So far I have not experience any focus stealing. It has only been 10 minutes, but this is promising. It appears there may be something in my customizations (of which there are many) which is triggering the focus stealing.
EDIT 8: After 24 hours, I haven't noticed a single instance of DOpus focus-stealing. It seems that some element of my custom configuration triggers it.