1714978 - Firefox does not receive focus when opening a new tab from command line

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Core :: Widget: Gtk, defect)

Description

[perlun]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:89.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/89.0

Steps to reproduce:

Whenever I click a link in another program (VS Code, Thunderbird etc) it successfully opens up a new tab in Firefox, but the existing Firefox instance does not receive focus. This changed semantics appeared around the time of the FF 89.0 upgrade.

Here's my .desktop entry (I'm running Debian Bullseye with Cinnamon as the desktop environment):

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Firefox
Comment=Web Browser
Exec=/home/per/apps/firefox/firefox-bin %u
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=/home/per/apps/firefox/browser/chrome/icons/default/default128.png
Categories=Network;WebBrowser;
MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/xml;application/vnd.mozilla.xul+xml;application/rss+xml;application/rdf+xml;image/gif;image/jpeg;image/png;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;
StartupNotify=true

Encoding=UTF-8
NoDisplay=false

I also tested launching /home/per/apps/firefox/firefox-bin www.google.com from a terminal, and it behaves exactly the same. I also tried changing firefox-bin to firefox in the command line, but it doesn't make any difference.

Actual results:

The URL is opened in a new tab, but the previous program retains window focus.

Expected results:

The Firefox window should receive focus

Comment 1

[perlun]

While writing the above, I discovered a workaround that actually seems to help on my system:

• Open Settings
• Under General -> Tabs, ensure the "When you open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately" checkbox is checked

Perhaps this works exactly as intended, but documenting it here in the help that it might help others. Feel free to dismiss this bug report if you consider this a non-bug.

Comment 2

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Widget: Gtk' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 3

[:gerard-majax]

I think that's indeed the intended behavior here.