Apps opening in background behind active window

Tech Support
1

I seem to be missing something embarrassingly simple…

My MacBook Air is now connected to an external display. The external display is the ‘main display.’ The setup look like this:

Screen Shot 2021-08-31 at 8.14.50 am
Screen Shot 2021-08-31 at 8.14.50 am1278×614 92.3 KB

‘Displays have seperate Spaces’ is ticked in Mission Control. Now all apps open in the background behind the active window … sometimes I can’t tell if they have been opened at all. For example, if I’m browsing in Safari and then need to open another app:

  1. press Cmd+Space to launch Alfred
  2. open another app e.g. Notes
  3. Notes opens in the background, behind Safari and it’s unclear that it opened

I have to repeat step 1 and 2 to get Notes to open in the foreground. Is there a way to have all apps open in the foreground to become the active app? This is the usual behaviour if I’m just using the laptop without the external display.

2

Update:

Well I feel sheepish!

Turns out, this seemed to be a bug in macOS Monterey public beta 5. It’s now working for me as expected in beta 6. That’ll teach me for using a beta on my primary machine. :grimacing: