Appdesigner window ends up in background after uigetfile

I am creating a graphic program using appdesigner but when I call a function where the user can choose a file (uigetfile) the figure window is often put behind some other of my open windows after the file has been chosen. For example if I have a word document open at the same time as my program, the word document gets focus when the file has been chosen and I have to click at the bottom bar to get back to my program. I was using GUIDE before and then I didn't have that problem. I am running on Windows. Is there a way to solve this?

[Jorg Woehl]

Same problem here. When I call uigetfile or uiputfile from an App Designer app, the focus is not correctly transferred to the new file selector window. Any workarounds?

[Chris McRaven]

I am also seeing this problem. I think this is unexpected behavior. The focus should return to the uifigure which called uigetfile(). My steps to reproduce are

1. Make a mlapp in App Designer that has a button that calls uigetfile()
2. Run the new program from App Designer
3. Click on the Matlab main window
4. Click back on the new program
5. Click the button which calls uigetfile()
6. Select a file, and click 'open'
7. Focus will return to the Matlab main window, not the new program as expected

This also works if I have another figure window open. That is, if I click away from the new program to any open figure window, then click back to the new program to run uigetfile(), the focus is returned to that open figure window.

I've tried calling figure(app.NewProgram) immediately after to no effect. I have also tried various drawnow calls as described below, but none worked. Has anybody found a workaround?

[Viresh]

To reinstall products, see this MATLAB Answer.

how to do this next step

Answer 1

[Onur Ozdemir]

As WTxnitz said, all these answers address getting the app window back as focus after uigetfile but what is preferred is to prevent it from minimizing in the first place. Here I made a small change to WTxnitz's answer, this way a non visible dummy figure is created instead of sending everything to background.

f = figure('Renderer', 'painters', 'Position', [-100 -100 0 0]); %create a dummy figure so that uigetfile doesn't minimize our GUI
[filename,path] = uigetfile('*.txt', 'Open text file','MultiSelect','on');
delete(f); %delete the dummy figure

This prevents uigetfile from sending appdesigner window to background while !

Best of luck.

[Milena Murillo]

Thanks a lot :)

[Zach Haveraneck]

Thanks. This is the answer I needed. works perfectly.

doesnt slow the process down, doesnt appear like anything happens other than the uigetdir window pops up then closes when a selection is made.

[dpb]

Agree it seems to work -- q? I have is "why/how?"

[Mario Malic]

It's magic!

However, setting renderer isn't necessarry and on new releases it warns that it will be removed soon.

[Jonas]

@Onur Ozdemir In addition, I would also suggest to set

'CloseRequestFcn',''

since if the user closes the dummy window manually, the workaround will not work (at least for me in 2022a)

[Adee]

Charming!

Making the figure invisible also works - the negative location may end up on another display.

All that's needed is

f = figure('Visible', 'off', 'CloseRequestFcn', '');

[sunshine]

Visible off not works for me

[Jorg Woehl]

@Adee, making the figure invisible does not work for me either. Also, chosing a negative location/zero width and height does not work in R2024a; a small dummy figure still shows up in the lower left corner of the display.

It is somewhat disappointing that this bug is not yet fixed by the folks at Mathworks, after existing for more than a dozen releases...

Answer 2

[Friedrich]

For MATLAB R2018a and newer you can use the figure command to focus your app again,

uigetfile; % Could be other dialogs here
drawnow;
figure(app.UIFigure)

For releases prior either turn the visibility off and on again or use the attached p file (change extension from .zip to .p). The usage then would be

uigetfile; % Could be other dialogs here
drawnow;
FocusUIFigure(app.UIFigure)

[Patrick Schuster]

Hello,

I cannot open the attached zip file.

Is it broken?

Regards

Patrick

[Payam Razavi]

Thanks for the answer. Please note for 2020a it worked better (without any jump to other applications) without "drawnow" command. Just added the following and it worked

figure(app.UIFigure)

[Omar Alamoudi]

This is an effective workaround, but this should not be the expected behavior right? I'm using 2020a and the dialog I'm using is inputdlg

[Mario Malic]

The answer works for me, but my window flickers for a moment Which is a little bit annoying. It seems that after exiting uigetdir command window gets focused by default. Did anyone experience this?

Note: App window flickers if MATLAB main window and App are on the same monitor, and MATLAB window not minimised..

[Francois Moyroud]

Even when did i minimise MATLAB window that app window flicks happen. Did you get any solution about that?

[Joyce Trapp]

In Matlab 2021b following did the trick for me:

filename = uigetfile(...);

figure(UIFigure);

(also assuming UIFigure is the name of your Figure)

[Onur Ozdemir]

This answer correctly restores the window! but you can prevent it from minimizing too (which I prefer), check out my answer. Thanks and good luck.

[Bruce Rodenborn]

Terrible answer. Staff at MATHWORKS should provide complete information in their solution. In particular, app.UIfigure is generically part of a NEW app in MATLAB, but is NOT part of a converted GUI. Your answer should have been properly commented instead of the anemic information provided.

[Bruce Rodenborn]

The solution works, but you need to find the appropriate ufigure in your ComponentBrowser. I attached an image in case you have the same problem. My code looks like:

[file_mat,dir_mat,FilterIndex]=uigetfile('*.mat','Select Data File');

drawnow; %update the figure windows

figure(app.figure) %bring the GUI back to the foreground

Answer 3

[Chris McRaven]

I believe I have a (somewhat ugly) workaround. Immediately after calling uigetfile(), simply make the main uifigure window invisible and then visible. Assuming the name of your uifigure window is 'UIFigure', add

...
filename = uigetfile(...);
app.UIFigure.Visible = 'off';
app.UIFigure.Visible = 'on';
...

right after the call to uigetfile().

[Jorg Woehl]

Didn't work either...

[Eric H.]

Chris, Your Visible = 'off'/Visible = 'on' trick worked for me. Thanks to everyone for posting this! Eric

[Philip Ziegler]

Thank you so much, Chris, you helped me to solve one of my issues for the GUI I had to program for my bachelors thesis! :D

[Matt J]

Didn't work for me either...

[karim botros]

it worked ,, Thank you so much for this workaround,, i hope matlab finds a solutions for this bug

[Tahoe Schrader]

This worked but is quite ugly. Wish there was a way to set focus without the app having to effectively blink on and off.

[Luke M]

Worked for me on 2017a. I haven't tried 2017b, so I don't know if they fixed it. If not, I hope MATLAB catches this and comes up with a fix.

[Sajad Mahnan]

I'm using Matlab 2018a and this issue did not fix.

[Harry Talbot]

This works for me in 2018a.

[Ghazi Mrazouk]

Worked for me 2017a.thanks

[Gijs de Vries]

Worked for me 2017b, thank you!

[xinxin wang]

Great idea！！worked for me 2018b.But it's so depressing we can't direct to UIfigure

[Phil]

Thanks alot!!

Answer 4

[Tomas Åhlman]

Try using:

filename = uigetfile(...); figure(app.UIFigure);

(assuming UIFigure is the name of your main window)

[Mustafa Caner Bulut]

Thank's! It works for me

[Farley Postgate]

This workaround works for me. I just tried it with matlab 2020a...

[Shaul Shvimmer]

Worked for me as well, thank you!

(MATLAB 2019b)

Answer 5

[WTxnitz]

All these answers address getting the app window back as focus after uigetfile.

The other side of the problem for me is the uigetfile dialog itself launches behind all other windows.

Here is a workaround I found. This works on 2020a and macOS Mojave

% open dummy figure
f=figure();
%bring figure to front focus
drawnow;

%the uigetfile dialog now opens properly in front focus
[xl_file,xl_path] = uigetfile('*.*');
% after user closes dialog

% delete dummy
delete(f);

%use solution elsewhere to return focus to app
app.your_app_here.Visible = 'off';
app.your_app_here.Visible = 'on';

This seems to work both from within the app embedded code and with "external" files

in the main Matlab window.

[Andrew Davies]

Thanks. First usable workaround I've found. You can hide the temporary figure with

f.Visible = 'off'; 

just after the first drawnow.

[WTxnitz]

Good answer. I'll give it a try.

Alternately, I use the figure title and a text box to replace the title argument macOS doen't honor.

If you play around, you can size and position the figure as a backdrop to the dialog.

I even roughly compensate for different screen resolutions.

[val]

Unfortunately, this does not work for me in 2021b :(

[WTxnitz]

Sorry to hear it doesn't work for you :-(

Just checked. It still works for me 2021b, update 1 (9.11.0.1809720) - latest

on latest MacBook Pro M1 and MacOs Monterey 12.1

also works on intel MBP

can't help more than this. hope you find a fix

[WTxnitz]

Not sure what didn't work

my answer is to get the uigetfile dialog itself in front focus

I did check my code and there is one difference, as to returning focus to the app

Based on other people's input instead of:

%use solution elsewhere to return focus to app
    app.your_app_here.Visible = 'off';
    app.your_app_here.Visible = 'on';

I use

    figure(app.your_app_here)

both seem to work

Answer 6

[NbrOneProcastinator]

2023 and still no official fix to this issue. Matlab App Designer users have been beta testers since years now!

Answer 7

[NbrOneProcastinator]

Seven years later and still just workarounds for this problem.

Not bad, Mathworks!

Answer 8

[Adam Danz]

Thanks for reporting the problem.

This has been fixed in R2025a. Focus now returns to the app that called uigetfile after the dialog is closed. The fix is also available in the R2024a and R2024b beta releases only (not the R2024a and R2024b general releases).

[Gavin]

I'm running R2024b with update 1 some of the related issues are fixed.

e.g. hitting Enter vs mouse click left the next dialog in the background.

uigetfile() left us in the background.

However in Windows, after uigetdir(); or uiconfirm();

figure(app.MyApp); is still required to bring the app back to the front. After directory selection the whole app disappears behind Chrome, Notepad, whatever else is open. At least now figure() works. In earlier versions even that didn't do it reliably.

And BTW, when it wasn't working it was NOT consistant. Sometimes it would work properly (randomly as far as I could see.)

[Adam Danz]

Thanks for these details Gavin.

Features in the beta release will soon be part of the general release. Using an upcoming release of MATLAB on my Windows machine, I just tests Gavin's list of uigetfile, uigetdir, and uiconfirm within the callback to an app button, both with mouse and keyboard activations. All combinations returned focus to the app even when a Word files, Excel file, and notepad++ file were opened and on the desktop.

As soon as that release comes out, I will update my answer to share the news and will welcome any additional feedback.

Answer 9

[awezmm]

Write commandwindow(); before you uigetdir

Answer 10

[Syed Hussain]

Hi

Its is really strange behaviour

My Solution was just to use

...
filename = uigetfile(...);
app.UIFigure.Visible = 'on';
...

It removed the glichy behaviour.

Thanks

[Jorg Woehl]

This did not bring the app window back in focus for me (R2024a), and it also doesn't resolve the issue of the file selector window ending up behind the app window when calling uigetfile.

Answer 11

[Riyadh Abbas]

Hi there, I found a solution to this issue provided by http://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/solving-a-matlab-hang-problem, which suggested adding two lines drawnow; pause(0.05);

I tried it and it did work for me, hope can solve your problem.

[Jorg Woehl]

Didn't work for me...

[Matt J]

Me neither.

[Neelakanthu Karra]

Didn't worked for me ....

[James Ryan]

Perhaps you misread the question. This is not a hang (as in your link). The window simply end up behind others.

Answer 12

[Jorg Woehl]

I have just published a simple workaround for these focus issues, which -- as The MathWorks acknowledges -- still have "currently no official workaround". Check out my File Exchange contribution https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/165961-fixfocus, which was in part inspired by this thread.

[Dmitry]

Works for me. Thanks!

[Henry Kafeman]

I have the same issue with a window appearing behind the App window, but I am using inputdlg() and @Jorg Woehl's fixfocus() does not work.

Does anyone have any other workarounds to help me?

Thanks

[dpb]

@Henry Kafeman -- which release are you using? See @Adam Danz's comment above that Mathworks thinks this is fixed in R2024a beta and the followup to that for ideas.

For various reasons I have not updated so can't test, but my opinion is that if are using R2024a (beta) or later and the issue still is present a new bug report should be filed or comment back directly to Adam.

[Jorg Woehl]

inputdlg works fine "out of the box", i.e. appears in front of the app window when called from an app callback. Henry's issue was, as it turns out, linked to calling inputdlg from the app's startupFcn, and it behaved badly as a result of it. This issue is therefore unrelated to the problem that fixfocus is addressing.

[Henry Kafeman]

@dpb I am using R2024b Update 2. As per @Jorg Woehl's clarification yesterday, my issue with inputdlg() is when I call it from the startupFcn()!

Is there any way of determining or waiting for when the rendering, etc. of the App startup has completed so that the inputdlg() appears in front of the App window?

Also, as per @Gavin's comment of 28th October the original issue is not fixed!

[Adam Danz]

I've provided an update in my comment under my answer. Addtionally, I tested the R2024b beta release and confirmed that all three dialogs listed in my comment successfully returned focus on the app.

The features in beta releases are not necessarilly available in the following general release. For example, dark theme has been available for several of the recent beta release but is not yet in the general release.