Positioning a Window Suddenly Behaves Differently and Unreliably

Questions & Suggestions
1

Howdy folks, I'm posting about some unusual activity while positioning windows that (re)appeared yesterday. It seems a few of us have run into this issue from time to time and as of yet I have not found the reason why it happens.

Basically, positioning a window used to be instantaneous and always placed the window in the position indicated in the action. Now, as you can clearly see in the screen recording, it is not instantaneous, and unfortunately it does not always end up where it's supposed to go (the latter part is not in the screen recording since it is completely random). While that in and of itself is not a big deal, what is a big deal is it does not always end up in the proper position anymore. I had this issue when I was running Big Sur, and it reappeared now a day after upgrading to Monterey. I have tried logging out and back in, rebooting, complete shutdown and restart but the issue persists. The issue suddenly started in the middle of my workday yesterday with no other changes having been made.

This topic made me wonder if it and anything to do with the mouse's position when triggering the macro, but at least on my end the mouse position does not appear to affect the window's final position.
Move & Resize Window Bug? - Questions & Suggestions - Keyboard Maestro Discourse

Anyhoo, I have come up with a workaround to ensure that the window ends up in the proper position using a While action and some AppleScript if anybody is interested in using it. But I wanted to post about this since it is an issue that has persisted for some time and across two different OS now. Once I start my work day I'll disable Rectangle (my window positioning app I use along-side KM) and see if that makes any difference.

-Chris

Info on the screen recording. A KM macro is moving the window to the lower-left, while all other positioning is done via Rectangle: Sreen Recording (click to expand/collapse)

Keyboard Maestro window position oddity

2

I know this is probably not relevant, but for about 2 weeks I've had Safari tabs randomly closing on me, even when the KM Engine is not running. But it's relevant in the broad sense that MacOS seems to have a mind of its own.

3

I have that too... from my research it appears to be an issue with iCloud not properly syncing open tabs across my devices. Fortunately it only seems to do it with any regularity in my tab groups, and not my normal browser window.

4

Ahhh. Thanks for the theory. That theory smells very good. I already believe you.

1 Like
5

UPDATE Friday, March 04, 2022:

This bug appeared on my wife's MacBook too, so it's not limited to just my iMac. It also makes me believe it's just an OS issue since both our computers were upgraded/updated recently. My iMac from Big Sur to Monterey, and her MacBook an incremental Monterey update. Still have no clue what the issue is from but at least I can say fairly confidently that it's not just a bug only on my computer.

6

Do you both use the same iCloud account?

7

We don't, but I have my own login on her MacBook.