Returning to SketchUp stops inferencing from working, can't switch tools, crash soon after

@TheOnlyAaron asked me if a particular thing he was seeing was a known problem in 2024. It wasn’t a known problem, but I soon worked out what was really going on. The real issue would affect all versions of SketchUp that are running on a macOS later than Monterey. I will explain…

Here are steps you can do in macOS Monterey, and get away with it:

  1. In any version of SketchUp, right-click somewhere in the document, to see a contextual menu.
  2. Single-click on the window of a background application. Or Command-tab to get there.
  3. Right-click in the background SketchUp window, to see the contextual menu. Not surprisingly the menu items are grayed out.
  4. Left-click, to cancel the menu. You are still in the other application, SketchUp is in the background.
  5. Left-click on the SketchUp window, and now right-clicks show the menu items as available.

What has changed in macOS Sonoma, and the same thing happens in Sequoia, is that the #4 step left-click action not only cancels the menu, it also brings SketchUp to the front, without SketchUp being aware of that. If you right-click, menu items are still disabled. If you try changing tools, or pointing at geometry, you’ll get no reaction. A short time later SketchUp is likely to crash.

The work around to the problem is to only go back to SketchUp with either a left-click, or a Command-tab. If you have accidentally got there with a right-click, then left-click, and you start to see the issues, click into any other application, and left-click or Command-tab to get back to SketchUp. It should then be behaving.

I have logged a bug about this. My hope is that SketchUp can be changed to notice when the system has brought it to the front as a side effect of a right-click menu being cancelled by the next left-click.

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nice catch Aaron !