Nothing takes your keyboard. While you type or play, Staypaw puts focus back where it belongs.
Windows lets apps pull focus to themselves: a chat popup, an installer, a browser an agent is driving. Your next keypress lands in the wrong window, sometimes on its default button. Space has cancelled a Visual Studio install, and Esc has killed a Bluetooth transfer. PowerToys #65 has asked for a fix since 2019.
Status: in development. Staypaw already logs every steal, protects the app you pick and holds stray keys, but there's no release to install yet. See ROADMAP.md. Until Staypaw ships, use one of the tools under Alternatives.
| You're… | Something takes focus | Without Staypaw | With Staypaw |
|---|---|---|---|
| typing in your editor | a chat popup | your next words go into the chat | focus comes straight back, and the keys you typed land in your editor |
| crafting in a game, hands off the keyboard | an agent's browser opens a page | the game loses focus | the game keeps focus, because you protected it |
| pressing Space | an installer with a Cancel button | the install is cancelled | the key never reaches the installer |
Planned for 1.0:
- Protects an app you pick. Nothing takes focus from it unless you click or Alt+Tab away, even while you're idle.
- Keeps focus where you're typing.
- Holds stray keys. A key you press during a steal never reaches the app that stole focus. It goes to your window once focus is back, or is dropped if that window is a game.
- Tells you which app did it, in a log you can open.
- Installs signed, through winget.
Staypaw watches your keyboard, so it has to be easy to trust.
- Nothing injected. Staypaw never loads code into another app, and never touches a game's process. Its keyboard hook is the low-level kind, which runs inside Staypaw itself.
- No network. There is no networking code, no updater and no telemetry.
- No keys stored. It keeps the time of each keypress, never the key. Keys held during a steal stay in memory for a moment, then go to your window or are dropped. They never go to a game. Nothing about them is written to disk.
- Open source, so you can check all of this instead of trusting it.
Checked against each project's own docs on 2026-10-21.
| Staypaw (planned) | NoFocusSteal 1.3.2 | Windhawk mod 1.0.2 | FocusLogger 1.3.12 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stops steals | after they happen, then puts focus back | after they happen, then puts focus back | before they happen, for the apps you list | no, it logs them |
| Injects into other apps | no | no | yes, into every process by default | no |
| Protects one app while you're idle | yes | Strict mode, for every app at once | you list the stealers instead | no |
| A key typed during a steal | held, never reaches the stealer | can land in the stealer (up to 1 in 185 keys in its own test) | none land | n/a |
| Signed, on winget | planned | not signed, not on winget | not checked | signed |
Pick NoFocusSteal today: it works, and Staypaw has no release yet. Pick the Windhawk mod if you know which apps steal focus and don't mind injection: it stops a steal before any key lands, which a tool that reacts afterwards can't promise. Pick FocusLogger if you only want to know which app it is.
Issues are welcome. Planning lives in ROADMAP.md.
Apache-2.0. Calla, the cat-eared homebody in this README, was drawn with an AI image model and is Apache-2.0 like the code. Hand-drawn art of her by @wrenishacking is on the way.