Bug: the macos Spotify desktop client doesn't behave correctly when user clicks to focus

xenxier — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 15:31:26 GMT

My Question or Issue

The macOS Spotify desktop client doesn't behave like other macOS applications when clicked. The normal behavior on macOS is that when an applications window is clicked, it is focused, but that click is not used as an action in the application. An exception to this rule is when you click a windows decorations/toolbars.

Easy steps to replicate:

- Open Spotify

- Open Finder by its side

- Focus Finder by clicking into the middle of its window, note it doesn't actuate anything in the Finder window, Finder just focuses

- Focus Spotify by clicking into the middle of its window, note that this DOES actuate the content in the Spotify window. I think it should not, to be consistent with other macOS applications.

I don't personally believe this is necessarily an amazing user interface decision on Apple's part, but Spotify should probably behave consistently with other applications on the Mac platform.

Visual studio code also has this issue, so it may be an issue with Electron.

Plan

Premium

Country

Device

Macbook Pro M3 Max 14 inch

Operating System

macos 15.5 (24F74)

Re: Bug: the macos Spotify desktop client doesn't behave correctly when user clicks to focus

xenxier — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 15:37:16 GMT

After some more Googling I found in VSCode, this can be resolved by setting the window.clickThroughInactive property in your settings.json to false.

Could Spotify also provide an option for this, if they don't wish to make if the default?

topic Re: Bug: the macos Spotify desktop client doesn't behave correctly when user clicks to focus in Desktop (Mac)

Bug: the macos Spotify desktop client doesn't behave correctly when user clicks to focus

Re: Bug: the macos Spotify desktop client doesn't behave correctly when user clicks to focus