Focus-follows-mouse (plus auto-raise) on Mac OS X

macos focus mouse
dreeves picture dreeves · Sep 19, 2008 · Viewed 88.8k times · Source

(I don't want to hear about how crazy I am to want that! :)

Focus-follows-mouse is also known as point-to-focus, pointer focus, and (in some implementations) sloppy focus. [Add other terms that will make this more searchable!] X-mouse

Answer

Clint Ecker picture Clint Ecker · Sep 19, 2008

You can do it for Terminal.app by issuing the following command at the command line:

defaults write com.apple.Terminal FocusFollowsMouse -bool true

For X11 apps you can do this:

defaults write com.apple.x11 wm_ffm -bool true

In Snow Leopard, use this instead:

defaults write org.x.X11 wm_ffm -bool true

Apparently there's a program called CodeTek Virtual Desktop that'll emulate it systemwide, but it costs $$ (and they never got a version out for OSX Leopard).

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