Windows 10 image randomly takes focus from Mac

Hi all,

Not sure if this is the right place to put this but I'm running MacOs Catalina with a Windows 10 image running in Parallels.

I do all Office based stuff (Skype, Office, Mail, Safari) all on Mac and do software development in Visual Studio etc in Windows.

What I'm finding, either with a recent update to Parallels or the Catalina MacOS update is that when I'm in Mac world (skyping colleagues etc), I can be typing and the Windows VM randomly takes focus back and the rest of my sentence is in the middle of the code I was writing!! It's not very often but often enough to be a problem (I've made it through writing this in Safari on the Mac and it hasn't happened...yet!).

I've searched the preferences and configurations and I can't see anything related to taking focus automatically (thought maybe it was if my build finished or some other Windows notification kicked in) but it's really annoying!!

Thanks for any ideas you might have

 

Just came back here to see if anyone had had any ideas (no!!) and wondering if it's when a notification in Windows happens? I haven't tied the grabbing of focus 100% to a notification appearing in Windows so it's just a thought.

I run my parallels in a window, not full screen, I let it take up 80% of my screen so my Skype window, safari etc can be to the side with enough visible to be able to see if a message comes in, and to click on a corner to focus them.

 

Just for check, please reinstall the Parallels Tools and check the same behavior.

 

@ChrisR17,
Did re-installing Parallel Tools resolve your issue?
I have a similar issue where I'm using a windows version of firefox in Coherence, and randomly firefox would disappear in the background.
I end up typing on my mac apps when I initially started in FireFox.
Looking for a solution.

 

ChrisR17,
so glad to see your post. I've seen this type of issue and thought for a bit it was my imagination.
My system is experiencing lots of events where the window that should have focus is getting buried behind other windows. It usually happens with a pop-up window either as a message/alert related to an application running in the Win v10 VM. It is happening in coherence mode, not sure if its happening when coherence is not active.
In addition, I run an application in the VM that opens a number of workspaces. Since the Catalina upgrade, when restarting this application (after VM shutdown and restart, always every day) some of the workspaces open in 'full screen' mode (when the last state was not full screen before shutdown). If I switch to coherence, the workspaces can't be moved until the are 'windowed' but the workspaces do not consume the entire display.
System: Parallels Pro current version; VM Win Pro v10 v1903, Build 1836.476; OS X 10.15.1
Any ideas or help greatly appreciated.
I have the updated the Toolbox3.7.0 (2768).

 

I have the same problem, extremely frustrating and is making me want to change to a Windows base machine and run VMWare (my company has these available so the switch will be easy once I'm finally pushed over the edge).

It happens on Windows 10 and 7 VMs. When any application finishes loading or anything pops up focus moves from what I am working on to the VM.
Parallels 15.1.2 (47123), latest tools installed (and reinstalled) in a Win10 (64 bit) and Win7 (32 bit and 64 bit) VM, OSX Catalina 10.15.2.

 

I have this problem too. I'm happily using the Mac with a Windows VM in the background when suddenly the Windows VM gets foregrounded. The only reasonable responses are to suspend the VM or quit Parallels. Surely Parallels doesn't want its customers to resent its software. Bounce a dock icon if you want me to go look at the VM for some reason, that's fine, but I have that option set already and it doesn't seem to care. Under no circumstances short of a data-threatening emergency should an app spontaneously take over focus. And along these lines, what the heck is going on when Parallels invokes Safari's "Bring All to Front" function? Is Parallels scraping all the web pages I have open?

 

I am having similar problem, but in reverse. I'm typing in Visual Studio or SSMS in Windows Guest, and all of the sudden Windows is not active window anymore (using Windows 10 in Full-Screen mode). Then I see my line of code sitting in Outlook or VS Code on the Mac host. I don't remember having this problem before, but it happening way too frequently for it to be me with a stray keystroke (not even sure you can change to host from keyboard).