Since SKP2025 I’ve been having issues with the Paint Bucket and material sampler. I press “B” for the paint bucket tool, tap alt, and nothing happens. If I wait and press alt again nothing happens. The only way to get past this is to do a small orbit, then press alt after selecting the paint bucket tool. Occasionally it gets hung up in a similar way when I try to go back to the paint bucket but usually it will automatically flip back to the bucket after sampling a material.
This is very annoying! I have to frequently undo erroneous material applications when I painted something I meant to sample, and I have to slow down to confirm that pressing buttons to activate certain functions have actually worked before moving on to the next steps in my process.
Has anyone else been experiencing this, and has anyone found a way to make things work properly? Thanks!
Thought I was on top of the latest updates but I do miss them sometimes as I need to make an IT appointment to install updates requiring admin privileges
Still happens for me in Sketchup 2026. I switch to paint bucket, but to press ALT to get the dropper I have to click the top of the screen and then I can press ALT for the dropper.
Think it has something to do with either multi-monitor configurations or having your trays open off-screen and not docked. I’ve kind of just started living with it ever since it started happening a couple years back lol.
Can you request admin privileges for a short period of time? In my job at my previous employer I often needed to be able to install software for mainenance or updates on critical life support equipment. I could get admin privileges for a few hours at a time. Made it easy to keep SketchUp up to date, too.
I do have a tray window open on another monitor which is floating. I’ve noticed that I have click the title bar of the window to get focus back to the model which is something I didn’t have to do prior to 2026 or maybe even 2025.
There has been a thing about which window has focus for at least a few versions. Might even have been in 2024. Not sure if this has something to do with the switch to the QT framework but I see other issues which require clicking on the main window title bar. It’s annoying.
Yeah it’s frustrating to have things work worse than previous versions, especially when they’re so minor that they likely won’t be a bit priority for the developers.
After updating Sketchup I can confirm that the UI focus still moves to my Materials palette and needs some kind of input on the main Sketchup window to return focus to the model, and without this, tapping alt will not activate the material sampler.
I wonder if this was a design decision; you’re selecting your bucket tool, your material tray is open, default to material tray.
Like, it suspects your going to select the material since the tray is open so it goes right there. If your material tray is closed but other trays are open, does the behavior persist?
Selecting the Paint Bucket tool will open the Materialspanel if it is closed. If it is open but collapsed, it will be expanded. If it’s panel is open in another tray that is not on top of a tray stack, then it’s tray will be brought to the top of the stack.
