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I have 2 monitors on a Mac Mini (El Capitan) both plugged via HDMI.

Whenever I move the mouse from one monitor to the other, I cannot directly interact with the applications on the screen where the mouse is. I must first click on the mouse.

Weirder still, this does not apply for right-clicks. If I move the mouse to another monitor, I can for instance right-click on a Finder window and create a new folder. But I will not be able to type the folder name.

I would like to be able to use both monitors seamlessly: is it possible?

Edit

This question was incorrectly flagged as a duplicate of How can I make focus follow the mouse cursor?.

I am not trying to "bring a window topmost" when I move the mouse over it.

I would like to be able to interact with any graphical interface on any of my monitors in a normal fashion, without the extraneous click currently required when moving the mouse to a different monitor.

Doing the following has no effect (as far as I can tell)

defaults write com.apple.Terminal FocusFollowsMouse -string YES
defaults write com.apple.x11 wm_ffm true

Note

I am currently using El Capitan but I am able to upgrade to Sierra. I could also install a third-party app, though I would prefer a native solution.

Community
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Sébastien
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  • What you are asking for is focus follows mouse. – tubedogg Oct 27 '16 at 20:26
  • @tubedogg No it is not what I am asking. I am not talking about focus. Maybe it is how it works "underneath" but this is not specifically what I need (a technical explanation of how Mac handles multiple monitors might be interesting but this is not my question). – Sébastien Oct 28 '16 at 10:21
  • Did you try the solution of the dupe link? Because the way you don't have to click twice (once to make the window active and the second one for the actual click) is called "focus." – Allan Oct 28 '16 at 10:29
  • @Allan it does not work – Sébastien Oct 28 '16 at 11:10
  • Try this: http://stackoverflow.com/a/29159270/4703819 – Allan Oct 28 '16 at 11:22
  • What you are actually asking for is for click-through to be enabled universally on your system (I should've been more explicit) but the way to achieve this is through focus follows mouse, because of the way click-through works on Mac. See http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/34446/enable-click-through-preferrably-for-all-applications. – tubedogg Oct 28 '16 at 15:37
  • Trying to "interact with any graphical interface on any of my monitors in a normal fashion, without the extraneous click currently required when moving the mouse to a different monitor" is called click-through. Activating a window is what occurs when the first (what you call extraneous) click occurs. While it is quite old, this Daring Fireball article about click-through is still accurate. – tubedogg Oct 28 '16 at 18:51
  • There's also a follow-up to that article. – tubedogg Oct 28 '16 at 18:52
  • If you insist that my question is invalid, please at least point to the answer that reflects your own point: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/34446/enable-click-through-preferrably-for-all-applications?noredirect=1&lq=1 As I said already I am not trying to make "focus follow the mouse cursor". – Sébastien Oct 29 '16 at 15:12
  • At this point I wish I could answer my own question. The answer is no, Mac OS El Capitan does not have that capability and no software can emulate it. The long answer, as I understand it so far, is that Mac OS has a philosophy that clicking on a window that is not "topmost" for the Operating System is dangerous (unless it raises the window "topmost") and it is not allowed for the user's safety. – Sébastien Oct 29 '16 at 15:16
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    It's a paradigm difference, Windows allows any click to act on the element under the cursor. Mac doesn't - or didn't... it's now partially implemented [much to my annoyance] for many elements. Close window by clicking over the red dot, for instance, now works that way :/ – Tetsujin Oct 29 '16 at 18:06
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    I would agree this should be reopened insofar as I agree with Sébastien that it should actually be re-closed as a duplicate of the question about click-through (34446) not the one about focus follows mouse, given his edited question. – tubedogg Oct 30 '16 at 05:25

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