A small but very annoying bug I came across while working with SketchUp 2025:
Let me go through what’s happening in the video, demonstrating exact steps to reproduce the issue:
- I pick a material, Paint Bucket activates.
- I can continuously press the Alt key to switch between Paint Bucket and Eyedropper tools, as expected.
- I go to the Edit tab and do the same switch between the two tools, everything normal.
- Now I click any button, slider or box on the Edit tab to adjust any value.
- I click on the face in the viewport to paint it, then press Alt to switch to the Eyedropper tool. As soon as the tool is activated again this way, the focus goes back to the number box I had just edited before. Pressing B for Paint Bucket would do the same thing.
- Since the focus is now on that box/slider/button, I can’t switch between tools anymore, not even to a different tool altogether, like the Move tool, for ex.
- Switching the focus to the viewport forcibly, by using the middle-mouse orbit for example, returns things to normal but as soon as you activate the Paint Bucket again at any time down the road, you’re stuck with the same behaviour until you switch to the Select tab so it resets.
- The problem goes away if the Materials window is docked (but I don’t wanna do that for workflow reasons).
- SketchUp 2024 doesn’t seem to have this problem
This means you can’t keep the Edit tab open as undocked if you wanna switch between Paint Bucket and other tools unless you’re ok with constantly orbiting a small amount to make it “forget” in between every use. This might be a very trivial one as far as bugs go, but it’s managed to drive me crazy in just one day since it’s something I do a hundred times a day. Thanks!
