u-he Plugins Still Stealing Focus in Bitwig v5 on Windows 10

[tasmaniandevil]

Finally had time to check this.
I can reproduce this on Windows.
Actually you don't even need to use the Alt+Tab combination, it's just the Alt key causing this.

This reminded me of another Windows Bitwig issue in combination with the Alt key.
When you use Capslock to play notes on the computer keyboard, pressing the Alt key will result in the plugin no longer playing notes via computer keys until you hit the Alt key again.

I strongly suspect that your issue and the other issue have the same underlying cause.
The problem seems to be that once the Alt key has been pressed, our plugins think that it is pressed down all the time until you press it again. Then the plugin finally realizes that the Alt key has been released and everything is working again.

So far I still cannot say if our plugins are interpreting the key command received from Bitwig wrong, or if Bitwig is actually sending a wrong key command.

[neverbeeninariot]

Not sure if this is helpful but as far as I know, on Windows, Alt+letter is a global default for opening Windows application menus (like "Alt+F" to open the File menu, etc.). If you only press Alt, then it activates the menu and waits for the 2nd keypress until you hit one of mapped menu keys, or hit Alt again to cancel.

This does not happen with all applications on my system (Win 10) but it does for the vast majority of them. So is it possible that Bitwig is waiting for you to supply a menu key while blocking input to everything else until Alt is pressed again? I'm not at my music PC at the moment, so I can't confirm if Alt+key actually activates the Bitwig menus, but if it doesn't then perhaps they need to disable the Windows global Alt key behaviour in the Bitwig app.

Just a thought... will test later.

[stekra]

Any new findings? I have the same problem with single monitor use and windows 11.

[tasmaniandevil]

From the release notes of Bitwig 5.2:

Fixed:
Windows: Some VSTs were taking keyboard focus after pressing ALT [36415]

[forever880days]

Using Alt on win11 can cause some plug-ins to lose keyboard focus. This problem still exists in bitwig5.2.4

[tasmaniandevil]

Using Alt on win11 can cause some plug-ins to lose keyboard focus. This problem still exists in bitwig5.2.4

Then please let Bitwig know about this.