Change the active Window

Question

I'm looking for a way to set the active window. The only solutions I found are outdated. They included modules like pywinauto but its focus() function doesn't work.

I need something that quickly switches/makes another window active.

I tried the code below, but it doesn't work as it says object has no attribute 'focus'

import pygetwindow as gw

win = gw.getWindowsWithTitle('Photoshop')[0]
win.focus()

I am using Windows 8

What OS are you using? – TheLazyScripter Oct 11 '19 at 02:04 — TheLazyScripter, Oct 11 '19 at 02:04
@TheLazyScripter Windows. Updated first post too – Khloe Oct 11 '19 at 02:09 — Khloe, Oct 11 '19 at 02:09

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 11 '19 at 02:21

I think the object method you're after is activate:

>>> help(win.activate)
Help on method activate in module 
pygetwindow._pygetwindow_win:

activate() method of 
pygetwindow._pygetwindow_win.Win32Window instance
    Activate this window and make it the foreground window.

So changing your code as follows should work.

import pygetwindow as gw

win = gw.getWindowsWithTitle('Photoshop')[0]
win.activate()

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 08 '23 at 01:56

Because the accepted answer is only for Windows, here is a Linux solution for most major distributions:

Install PyWinCtl and the dependency tkinter

sudo apt install python3-tk
pip install PyWinCtl

Change the import in the example code from above

import pywinctl as gw
win = gw.getWindowsWithTitle('Signal')[0]
win.activate()

Change the active Window

2 Answers2