How to set focus on a client under mouse cursor when a tag is changed?

Question

When I switch to another tag, a new client gets selected, but it is sometimes not a client that I have my mouse cursor over. To get a client under my mouse pointer focused, I have to either click somewhere on it, or switch to it with Mod4+j / k, or move mouse cursor out and back on that client.

I want awesome to give focus to a client that is under the mouse cursor whenever a tag is changed. How do I do that?

I found a function mouse.object_under_pointer() that finds the client I need, but I don't know when to call that function. Should I connect a handler to some particular signal? I tried connecting to various signals from Signals page on the wiki and checking with naughty.notify() if that is the right signal, but none of them were triggered when I was switching between tags.

Answer 1

This code did the trick, however there should be a better way to do this than setting up a huge 200 ms timer (smaller timeouts didn't properly focus some clients for me, but you can try setting a smaller one).

tag.connect_signal(
  "property::selected",
  function (t)
    local selected = tostring(t.selected) == "false"
    if selected then
      local focus_timer = timer({ timeout = 0.2 })
      focus_timer:connect_signal("timeout", function()
        local c = awful.mouse.client_under_pointer()
        if not (c == nil) then
          client.focus = c
          c:raise()
        end
        focus_timer:stop()
      end)
      focus_timer:start()
    end
  end
)

tag is this global object, so you should just place this code anywhere in your rc.lua.