1997253 - External links no longer open in last active Firefox window, but rather whatever window in current screen

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1994825

(Core :: Widget: Win32, defect)

Description

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User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:144.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/144.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. On Windows, create 2 virtual desktops A and B.
2. Create 2 Firefox windows, one on each desktop A and B.
3. On Desktop B, open and focus on some other non-Firefox window (e.g. Notepad) to avoid focusing on Firefox window B.
4. Switch to desktop A and focus on Firefox window A, then switch to desktop B.
5. The last-active Firefox window should be A at this point, while we are viewing desktop B.
6. In any external software (e.g. Discord), open a link.
7. The link is opened in window B.

Actual results:

The link is opened in the wrong window (B). B is not the last-active window so it should not open the link.

Expected results:

The link should open in window (A), because it is the last-active window.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Widget: Win32' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Greg Stoll :gstoll]

This was by design per bug 1423768. We did add a pref to control this that will ship in Firefox 145: setting widget.prefer_windows_on_current_virtual_desktop to false will restore the old behavior.