Mouse Follows Focus

Traditional window managers are mouse-centric: the window to receive input is usually selected with the pointing device.

Emacs is keybord-centric: the window to receive key input is usually selected with the keyboard. When you use the keyboard to focus a window, the spatial relationship between pointer and active window is broken – the pointer can be anywhere on the screen, instead of over the active window, which can make it hard to find.

The same problem also exists in traditional windowing systems when you use the keyboard to switch windows, e.g. with Alt-Tab.

Because Emacs’ model is inversed, this suggests that the correct behavior is also the inverse – instead of using the mouse to select a window to receive keyboard input, the keyboard should be used to select the window to receive mouse input.

EXWM-MFF-MODE is a global minor mode which does exactly this. When the selected window in Emacs changes, the mouse pointer is moved to its center, unless the pointer is already somewhere inside the window’s bounds. While it's especially helpful for for EXWM users, it works for any Emacs window in a graphical session.

This package also offers the EXWM-MFF-WARP-TO-SELECTED command, which allows you to summon the pointer with a hotkey. Unlike the minor mode, summoning is unconditional, and will place the pointer in the center of the window even if it already resides within its bounds – a handy feature if you’ve lost your pointer, even if you’re using the minor mode.