WPF Popup Focus Manager

About

This skill provides a robust implementation pattern for managing focus within WPF applications, specifically targeting issues where Popup controls fail to display or function correctly when the application loses focus to other background tasks. By utilizing the PreviewMouseDown event and IsKeyboardFocused checks, it ensures that the application window is automatically reactivated and focus is restored when a user interacts with the UI, providing a seamless experience for complex desktop applications that rely on persistent or interactive popups.

Key Features

• Implementation of the PreviewMouseDown focus acquisition pattern
• Automatic window activation logic for background application recovery
• IsKeyboardFocused verification to maintain popup state and interactivity
• 6 GitHub stars
• Support for both Window-level and UserControl-level focus restoration
• Standardized patterns to prevent unexpected popup closure on multi-monitor setups

Use Cases

• Fixing UI bugs where WPF popups disappear when clicking back from another application
• Ensuring consistent popup behavior in desktop software that runs in the background
• Building professional WPF dashboards where popups must stay open during multitasking