I have not seen this problem since turning off focusFollowsMouse a week ago. One other (possibly relevant) item for tracking this down: I have unclutter running. My current xmonad.hs is below. -Ben --- --- --- myManageHook = composeAll [ className =? "Gimp" --> doFloat , className =? "Vncviewer" --> doFloat , className =? "Skype" --> doFloat , className =? "Pidgin" --> doFloat ] <+> manageDocks <+> scratchpadManageHook (W.RationalRect 0.25 0.1 0.5 0.8) <+> manageHook defaultConfig myConfig xmproc = defaultConfig { manageHook = myManageHook , layoutHook = avoidStruts $ layoutHook defaultConfig , logHook = dynamicLogWithPP $ xmobarPP { ppOutput = hPutStrLn xmproc , ppTitle = xmobarColor "green" "" . shorten 50 } , modMask = modm , terminal = "urxvtcd" , startupHook = spawn "xmonadrc" , focusFollowsMouse = False } `additionalKeys` [ ((modm, xK_s), scratchpadSpawnActionTerminal "urxvtcd") ] where modm = mod4Mask main = do xmproc <- spawnPipe "xmobar" xmonad (myConfig xmproc)