Big Sur opening the links from another app in background

[cikakosta]

Steps to reproduce

1. Use Reeder or Firefox
2. Set in Reeder to open links in background
3. Try opening a link from Reeder or Firefox

Actual

• It brings Browser in foreground
• If i try this not using Objektiv, it works as it should
• This was working on Catalina and before

Expected

• Browser should open the link in background.

[cmeury]

Thanks for reporting this, @cikakosta. Presumably, you are referring to Reeder 5, the news reader app? Unfortunately, it is a paid software. To be able to reproduce this behaviour, is it happening with any other software that is free?

[cikakosta]

Hey @cmeury , thanks for the reply. Here is my case:
When I first launched Objektiv on Big Sur it asked me to set it as a default browser. I confirmed that. From option menu i set Firefox.
Take default email client, Mail, for example.
If you click on a link from the email, you will open it in default browser (in my case Firefox) which comes to foreground that moment you click on the link.

However, opening links in background from Mail can also be achieved by holding Command key and clicking on the link (try it yourself without having Objektiv as your default browser and it will work regardless if its firefox, safari, brave etc as your default browser. The difference between Mail app and Reeder is that in reeder you can set dedicated shortcut to open in background, but in Mail app you have to hold cmd key and then open. I hope this helps 👍

[cmeury]

@cikakosta Thanks for elaborating. I just tested this on Big Sur 11.0.1, when I set Chrome as my default browser in System Preferences, ⌘-click in Mail.app will open in a new tab but bring Chrome to the foreground. Personally, I never opened link this way, so I don't know if that has changed from previous versions in general? What I'm trying to say is: Is this a general issue of Big Sur, and not Objektiv?

[cikakosta]

I dont remember if this was in previous systems or not frankly. But opening in background should work the same way regardless if you set your default browser in:
System preferences / General and set Chrome/Firefox
Or in System preferences / General and set Objektiv and then in Objektiv menu bar you set Chrome/Firefox

Also, I have attached video, just to make it more precise (as its possible that one of us is missing something :) )
Link to the video of bug reproduction

[cmeury]

Interesting, I tried it out with Firefox, and it indeed is reproducible there. But I cannot get links to open in the background when selecting Chrome as the default browser. I guess this is implemented on the browser side, and Objektiv does not currently forward the intention properly. Thanks for filing this bug report.

@Vorror You wouldn't have an idea how this could be fixed?

[cikakosta]

@cmeury You are welcome! :) Thanks for looking at it 👍

[Vorror]

@cmeury Hmm, maybe there's a flag not being set or there's a different flag for Big Sur. The nsworkspace API we're using didn't seem to attempt to detect whether or not we should open the targeted browser in the background.

[cmeury]

That makes sense. nsworkspace seems to be deprecated, maybe that's part of the story. I tried to have a look in the code, but as a complete beginner in any coding targeting Apple products, I'm quite at a loss. If anyone else would like to jump in, please do so, I don't know when I'll be able to learn the frameworks and language.