Keep regular policy while windows remain open to avoid repeated Dock registration. Share the activation retry budget across visibility events and stop permanently after exhaustion.
Keyboard-launcher launches (Raycast/Spotlight Enter) left the
LSUIElement app unforegrounded with a missing Dock icon until Mission
Control forced a refresh. Investigation across real-machine rounds
(recorded in the ADR-0017 supplements) pinned three cooperating causes:
- The launch activation retry never started at launch: the workspace
window's participation events (anchor attach / occlusion / key) could
all miss the launch moment when content installed before the window
became visible and the visibility notification fired before the
anchor attached. A deferred visibility rescan plus re-armable chain
(until truly settled) close this gap.
- NSApp.isActive can report an activation illusion while the menu bar
still belongs to the previous frontmost app, so the settle check now
requires both isActive and menu bar ownership.
- A same-turn accessory->regular bounce is coalesced away by the
system; forced activation is a three-hop sequence with real settle
delays (accessory -> 0.1s -> regular -> 0.15s -> activate), which
re-registers the app with WindowServer/Dock and reclaims the menu
bar. Each acting attempt also re-asserts makeKeyAndOrderFront and
orderFrontRegardless as a visible-layer fallback.
Diagnostics: launchActivationRetry and windowAnchorAttached events
(unified-log category "window") record per-attempt facts (activation,
local policy, frontmost app, menu bar owner, space, window visibility);
user-environment facts stay out of shared diagnostic reports.
Qiu Yuzhou