Ubuntu’s developers have landed a late fix for an annoying window focus behaviour in time for the upcoming 25.10 release.
You’re in the middle of typing up a document, mousing around in the file manager or scrolling through lines of code when—bam—the Update Manager window unexpectedly appears, stealing input focus from what you were actively typing or scrolling in.
An annoying, if well-intentioned “install your updates, yo” behaviour.
Ubuntu’s update manager gains focus when it opens to show pending system updates under Wayland. Under X11, the app can launch in the background using the --no-focus-on-map flag. Alas, that functionality doesn’t work under Wayland.
“GNOME Shell and most other Wayland desktops default to focusing any new window because the mechanism to explicitly request focus is not broadly implemented yet,” Ubuntu’s Alessandro Astone explains in a bug report.
So, until efforts to improve window focus in Wayland ‘mature’, Ubuntu’s team plan to switch to a more discreet behaviour, and avoid interrupting whatever users are working on whenever Update Manager is eager to let them know about pending updates.
The new method displays a desktop notification with options to open the app to view available updates, or go ahead and install them directly from the notification. An applet will show in the system tray area is the notification is dismissed.
It’s a practical workaround while Wayland’s window activation protocols are hammered out and downstream distros and desktop makers adapt to use them.
As Ubuntu 25.10 is already in beta, well past the various interface and feature freezes that are in place, developers had to file a Feature Freeze Exception (FFe) to land this fix in a non-LTS release.
This will ensure proper testing of the less occlusive approach, with any lingering issues addressed (or alternative approaches taken) so that users who rely on LTS builds aren’t unduly affected.
If you’ve ever been annoyed by typing or mouse clicks ending up in Update Manager because it unexpectedly opens on your desktop you don’t need to keep anything crossed this fix makes it in — it was given the go-ahead today (23 September).