Emacs cannot be alt-tabbed into

[Timo Wiren]

On Ubuntu 11.10 I can't alt-tab into Emacs. I must close or minimize all other windows to see the Emacs window. Also, clicking Emacs icon on the quick launcher launches a new Emacs instance instead of showing an already open window. I did not have this problem on 11.04.

Unity: 4.22.0-0ubuntu3
Emacs: 23.3+1-1ubuntu4

[Timo Wiren (timo-wiren)]

I rebooted my machine and the problem is gone, so it does not seem to happen consistently.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Stewart Smith (stewart)]

I also see this.

I can click on the window, or use the expose-like functionality to find it. But alt-tab doesn't pass through it and clicking on the emacs icon in the dock does nothing.

I haven't tried rebooting, so cannot confirm if it fixes it or not.

[Tim Penhey (thumper)]

Reported by other users too, so seems to be more than just occasional.

[Joshua Harlan Lifton (joshua-harlan-lifton)]

I see similar behavior with Pidgin. The first reboot after installing Pidgin seems to fix this.

I also have the problem that ghost emacs icons appear in the alt-tab window switcher, meaning there are emacs icons there that don't correspond to any emacs window and switching to them doesn't do anything.

GNU Emacs 23.3.1
3.0.0-14-generic #23-Ubuntu SMP Mon Nov 21 20:28:43 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[Michael Hope (michaelh1)]

Also affects me on current Precise. Emacs shows in the launcher but not in the Alt-Tab list.

[Luis Henriques (henrix)]

I have the same behaviour with emacs and xterm.

[Stéphane Gourichon (stephane-gourichon-lpad)]

Same problem here on a fresh 12.04 .
Workaround: Super-W allows to see emacs frame and go to in by clicking.

Surprisingly, sometimes Super-W does not actually show the emacs window(s). I know it's (there are) there because the layout chosen by Super-W makes room for it (those), but nothing happens there. I can click on the area blindly and get the expected emacs window back.

This is a fresh install with daily image : b97df65064a21f49555c3f93ccf1cbdd precise-desktop-amd64.iso
Access: 2012-04-10 20:57:27.775071574 +0200
Modify: 2012-04-10 08:35:11.000000000 +0200
Change: 2012-04-10 20:54:10.208146854 +0200

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

what version of emacs do you use and how do you run it?

[Binho RbSoft (binhorbsoft)]

The Bug #942222 is not a duplicate of this! They are very different! The duplicate status is wrong!

[Seth Johnson (sethj)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug. We have tried to recreate this on the latest release of Ubuntu and cannot reproduce it. This bug is being marked as Invalid. If you believe the problem to still exist in the latest version of Ubuntu please comment on why that is the case and change the bug status to NEW.