{"id":29109,"date":"2020-06-01T16:13:36","date_gmt":"2020-06-01T20:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=29109"},"modified":"2020-06-02T15:47:32","modified_gmt":"2020-06-02T19:47:32","slug":"apple-mail-randomly-becomes-the-frontmost-application","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/01\/apple-mail-randomly-becomes-the-frontmost-application\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Mail Randomly Becomes the Frontmost Application"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philipp Defner<\/a> (also: Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Since macOS 10.12 there’s a bug in Apple Mail that causes it to randomly become the frontmost application. If you are in full screen mode — like when you are giving a talk or watching a movie — it opens itself up in split view mode where it takes up half the screen while your other main window is being resized.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

After some research it became clear that it’s related to Gmail and I’m not exactly the only one[…]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

As a developer of a Mail plug-in, I’ve been hearing about this for years. People assume it must be caused by third-party software, but in fact it can occur with a clean macOS installation. I’m not sure that it’s limited to Gmail accounts. It may just affect more Gmail users because (a) there are a lot of Gmail users, and (b) Gmail’s IMAP implementation is particularly unreliable, often unavailable for short periods of time.<\/p>\n\n

vladharbuz<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

It seems to happen because of improper error handling. If you look closely at the app in the instant it opens, your affected account will have a “disconnected” symbol next to it in the sidebar. However, it goes away before an error can be shown.<\/p>\n

My theory is: there is a momentary connection issue with these G Suite accounts, and Mail.app starts to show an error by focusing itself, but the error is resolved so quickly it doesn’t actually get to show the “connection problems” modal.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

evanelias<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

In my experience, if you always hide the Mail window (cmd-h) instead of closing it (cmd-w), it won’t ever pop back up. Takes a while to retrain the muscle memory though!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2020-06-02): mkalina<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Not only with Gmail. Same happens with O365\/Exchange, too.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philipp Defner (also: Hacker News): Since macOS 10.12 there’s a bug in Apple Mail that causes it to randomly become the frontmost application. If you are in full screen mode — like when you are giving a talk or watching a movie — it opens itself up in split view mode where it takes up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2020-06-01T20:13:39Z","apple_news_api_id":"c019e941-eaff-4c80-8844-9880946f6ccc","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2020-06-02T19:47:35Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AwBnpQer_TICIRJiAlG9szA","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[126,131,433,30,1381,1529,1609,1666],"class_list":["post-29109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-applemail","tag-bug","tag-gmail","tag-mac","tag-macos-10-12","tag-macos-10-13","tag-macos-10-14","tag-macos-10-15"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29109"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29129,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29109\/revisions\/29129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}