SketchUp 2026 – Detached Tray Interferes with Work-Flow Rhythm
SketchUp running on Windows 11.
I keep my Trays on a separate screen from the main SketchUp window. While drawing in the main window, I often use the shortcut key B to activate the Paint Bucket tool. However, when I do this, the main SketchUp window becomes inactive—something I typically don’t notice right away.
As a result, when I press ALT to use the Material Sampler (eyedropper), it doesn’t activate because the main window isn’t focused. Now that I understand what’s happening, I try to remember to click on the SketchUp window to make it active again. But it would be much better if pressing B while the cursor is still over the SketchUp window kept that window active.
Once the window becomes inactive, you can’t just click anywhere to reactivate it—because whatever you click will get painted with the current material. The only safe way to bring the window back into focus is to click the topmost horizontal bar (the Title Bar) of the SketchUp window.
Note: Everything works correctly if the Tray is attached to the main SketchUp window. But as soon as the Tray is detached—either floating on top of the SketchUp window or placed on another screen—the main SketchUp window loses focus when using the Paint Bucket shortcut.
Finally, someone found out what is happening, this bug drove me nuts in the last time, but i haven’t noticed that the main window is deactivated like this. Seems like the tray window has several problems … again.
Regardless of the undesired tool behavior, it is normal when floating child windows seize the focus, that the main application (or parent) window loses focus. (This usually is signaled by the caption bar going grey on the window that loses focus.)
The Materials inspector panel (or it’s tray window) receiving focus was a design decision based upon the likelihood that a material would need to be chosen from the panel. However, the ALT sampling workflow has been criticized in the past for poor workflow support.
IMO, it is not B that should refocus the modeling area, but pressing ALT | Option that should when the Materials inspector is floating and the Paint Bucket tool is active.
If it’s true that the developers intentionally designed the Materials inspector panel (or its tray window) to receive focus—based on the assumption that users would likely want to select a material from it—then I suppose that was a conscious choice. But it’s also possible that this behavior is just the default, and the opportunity to improve the user experience was missed.
A better approach would be to keep the focus on the window under the mouse cursor. And if that’s not technically feasible, then the focus should remain on the main SketchUp window—the “main event,” so to speak. If the user wants to select a new material, they can do so by clicking directly in the Materials tray. That interaction would make sense, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
There are features of the Windows OS that honors the mouse location such as wheel scrolling, which applies to the window beneath the mouse regardless if that window has focus.
I had worked on this concept in the past, and resurrected the project yesterday.
A bit more work to do. Perhaps you’d like to test it when ready?
Could be an option, yes. If the panel’s tray window is not open, open it, but return focus to the main app window.
Except that interacting with a floating Materials panel causes the tray window to seize the focus, so the main app and the modeling area loses focus. It’s also a scenario that shares the ALT sampling workflow problem.
This is not behaviour that I appear to be experiencing.
If I activate the paint bucket tool by pressing my shortcut key (in my case w), I can press the alt key and the eyedropper activates without any need to bring the modelling window into focus.
The Materials inspector panel (or it’s tray window) receiving focus was a design decision based upon the likelihood that a material would need to be chosen from the panel. However, the ALT sampling workflow has been criticized in the past for poor workflow support.
That’s very interesting. I personally know hardly anyone who doesn’t use the B/ALT workflow. Of course, it strongly depends on what you’re doing with SketchUp. But in my industry (interior design), all my colleagues work this way. Especially when a model has a large number of materials (particularly when several people are working on it), nobody uses the material window to find the material first and then select it.
yeah, material window is useful if you only have 5-10 materials top. and if they’re strikingly different. but as soon as you have 3 different dark greys, it’s eyedrop time.
True. Same as the Components window. You cannot see anything anyways. Maybe a dedicated and much bigger components/materials “browser” would be a useful feature in the future …
Well said. This is a case of … it is better to find out how the users are using a feature, rather than rely on assuming how the users are likely to use a feature.
Sampling ensures that like objects are painted with the same material.
One technique I use to avoid getting mixed up with the materials is this: I draw cubes, then fill their faces with the materials I intend to use in the model—as a kind of reference—and always keep these at the origin of the drawing. This ensures that I don’t have any duplicates in the model and can always refer back to this reference.
Therefore, for me, the material window is practically obsolete.
Excellent idea for improving the Materials panel. I.e., a model level “master palette”.
The Mac color panel has something like this, but it is application level.
Such a custom palette would be easier if it were more accessible. (If you didn’t need to orbit to the model origin or have a dedicated scene page displaying it.)
The Trimble team have been collecting requests and ideas for improving the inspector panels.
Any improvements would be down the road after both platforms are on the Qt interface (which they’ve spoken about publicly in these forums.)
FYI, I know some Mac users insist that the Materials panel retain some kind of custom palette separate from the scrollable browser list (which many find tedious to use.)
A tree view in the Material Browser would be a great feature, or even better, the ability to have a folder structure within the model. A tree view like the one D5 Render has, for example.
This would allow you to create templates for different types of projects, such as “Interior Design,” “Landscaping,” or something else.
When planning an interior, for instance, I always have various floor coverings, wallpapers, wall colors, fabrics, surface materials for furniture, stone surfaces, etc. If you could create such a structure, ideally even as a separate palette—let’s call it “Base Materials”—that would be an elegant solution.
This is something we definitely want to address. We got a lot of feedback from long time Mac users not to take away their color pencils. While we won’t re-introduce that OS level system, we want to explore an improved Materials Editor with some color palette in a future iteration.
This behavior has been so frustrating. It’s erratic for me, some days the B + ALT workflow is smooth, focus stays in the main window, while other days I experience the behavior described. In addition, the ALT modifier also seems to be a “sticky” key, requiring clicks back in the SU window after the B command, and again after the ALT sampling, and again pressing ALT or B to get out of the sampling tool and back to the paint tool. This is the only tool that acts this way and it has been driving me absolutely nuts since switching to 2025. If it’s putting the tool tray in Focus, I do not understand the logic. If I were going to go to the tool tray to select a color, it automatically enters the paint bucket tool once a selection has been made from the tool tray.
Please keep the Focus in the SU window always, there are no other tools that steal the focus from the window.
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