`wezterm start` launches in background on macOS

[goerz]

What Operating System(s) are you seeing this problem on?

macOS

Which Wayland compositor or X11 Window manager(s) are you using?

No response

WezTerm version

20240922-151228-2b76c63b

Did you try the latest nightly build to see if the issue is better (or worse!) than your current version?

Yes, and I updated the version box above to show the version of the nightly that I tried

Describe the bug

When starting WezTerm by issuing the command

wezterm start --always-new-process

(or even just wezterm start, and also if using wezterm-gui), the window that opens is in the background:

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/cbc49829-6bb2-498b-b670-3d766862996c

This happens whether issuing wezterm start from another terminal, or via any other way of running a command (a shell script inside a Keyboard Maestro macro, in my case). The only way to start WezTerm in the foreground is to open the WezTerm.app.

To Reproduce

Open the macOS built-in Terminal app.

Run

wezterm start --always-new-process

Configuration

no config

Expected Behavior

A new WezTerm GUI app instance should appear, active and in front of my existing windows (as if I had launched the WezTerm.app in the GUI)

Logs

> $HOME/Downloads/WezTerm-macos-20240922-151228-2b76c63b/WezTerm.app/Contents/MacOS/wezterm start --always-new-process
2024-09-28 10:29:39.581 wezterm-gui[67603:8842169] +[IMKClient subclass]: chose IMKClient_Legacy

Anything else?

I came across something similar recently in https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/2330, and the resolution there – using the deprecated -[NSApplication activateIgnoringOtherApps:] API – might be applicable here as well.

In fact, this issue with WezTerm came up while trying to set it up as a wrapper for neovim. I'd be interested in any workarounds for a background shell script running something like

/opt/homebrew/bin/wezterm-gui --config-file $HOME/.config/wezterm/neovim.lua start --always-new-process -- /opt/homebrew/bin/nvim "$FILE"

and having that WezTerm window appear in the foreground.

[goerz]

There does seem to be a possible workaround, which I tried on a lark:

open -n -W -a $HOME/Downloads/WezTerm-macos-20240922-151228-2b76c63b/WezTerm.app --args --config-file $HOME/.config/wezterm/neovim.lua start --always-new-process -- /opt/homebrew/bin/nvim

[goerz]

The workaround does indeed work, see the neovim wrapper in my configuration. So this doesn't seem like a high-priority issue, but still buggy behavior.