Previews disappear when moving cursor up to select

[ianlewisau]

When trying to select a preview, I find that I often might have to retry two or three times as when I move up to the previews, they disappear. Sometimes it works immediately. I've tried reconfiguring the preview separation and display times, but there is no impact on this behaviour.

[steventheworker]

Does restarting AltTab or DockAltTab fix it? That usually happens when DockAltTab doesn't bind correctly.

Also 'Show Delay' & 'Hide Delay' do not function (yet). It'll show in the changelog of a future update (hopefully soon).

[ianlewisau]

Restarting AltTab made no difference. Restarting DockAltTab improved things, but previews still seemingly randomly disappear.

[steventheworker]

See if there's any duplicate processes in Activity monitor for AltTab/DockAltTab.

You can also try resetting permissions

Quit the app(s) before running

tccutil reset All com.steventheworker.alt-tab-macos

tccutil reset All com.steventheworker.DockAltTab
tccutil reset ScreenCapture com.steventheworker.DockAltTab
tccutil reset AppleEvents com.steventheworker.DockAltTab
tccutil reset Accessibility com.steventheworker.DockAltTab
tccutil reset MediaLibrary com.steventheworker.DockAltTab
tccutil reset ListenEvent com.steventheworker.DockAltTab

If neither of these worked a recording might be helpful.

[ianlewisau]

Single DAT and AltTab processes. Resetting permissions on DAT?

[steventheworker]

Quit the app(s) before running

tccutil reset All com.steventheworker.alt-tab-macos

tccutil reset All com.steventheworker.DockAltTab
tccutil reset ScreenCapture com.steventheworker.DockAltTab
tccutil reset AppleEvents com.steventheworker.DockAltTab
tccutil reset Accessibility com.steventheworker.DockAltTab
tccutil reset MediaLibrary com.steventheworker.DockAltTab
tccutil reset ListenEvent com.steventheworker.DockAltTab

[ianlewisau]

Screen.Recording.2025-04-29.at.22.16.11.480.mov

[ianlewisau]

I tried the reset procedure and there was no difference after restoring all the permissions. I then recorded the issue as in the previous comment.
I reduced the size, which blurred things but it still shows the issue that sometimes the previews disappear when trying to select one. It's not all the time, but sometimes it might happen three times before allowing a preview to be selected.

[shredthaGNAR]

did you upgrade to the new .1 version of AltTab or 3.0.3 of Dock....helped in my expierence also increased dock zoom hover setting-increasing it so the icon gets larger when hovered

[hellohasan]

facing the same issue on v3.0.05

[shredthaGNAR]

I was experiencing all kinds of problems when I upgraded to Tahoe

-NOTE: i run the dev beta build version so right now i am running 26.3

I could get it to show preview 1 time, the very first intial mouse hover would show a preview and then nothng usually would result in a force quit situation because DockAltTab would stop responding and error out.

I ended up regressing all the way back to i forget now but an early version like DockAltTab 2.5 and matching AltTab Mod version. It was okay because it at least worked.

Recently when Apple released 26.3 I decided to try again and I had same results as before. But kept tinkering and I reset all remissions like usual but this time I also added "App Management" privledge to DockAltTab. Then I built DockAltTab locallly because IIRC there is a commit or 2 missing from the latest release and thought give it a try. Well guess what. IT WORKS! Perfect just how it did previously a few months ago---actually better than ever! So I don't know what did it the build? because had done that before or the added permission?

Just wanted to give you an idea to try with the premission and if you have xcode just build it yourself should be quick, obviously try premission first and if no luck then build. If you dont know how build i could prob post mine on here

[shredthaGNAR]

also make sure you download the latest Alttab Mod because it is a little tricky if you dont watch it because the link on website and in readme page is not the latest version there is a higher point version that you can get by just cicking the releases link and goto the releases page .

Latest is 1.94.2 not .1.94.0.which is posted on site and readme. no biggie it happpens. here is the link https://github.com/steventheworker/alt-tab-macos/releases/tag/1.94.2

and thanks as always Steven was almost going to have to use DockDoor which is an excellant app and could be of some inspiration for this project. But DockAltTab is my must have and of course AltTab Mod ;) So just wanted to say thanks for updates and keeping it going strong much appreciate and still think its a bummer and a mistake that the AltTab dev didn't ever implement the little code so DockAlttab could be an easy bolt on app for AltTab users, it would increase the user-base tremendously and be a big help to people and bring awareness to them of project and possibility they could have previews without any work at all just install a free open source app. But i digress......

[shredthaGNAR]

its happening again with the newest release on the new beta release......

[HendrikPieters]

its happening again with the newest release on the new beta release......

Same here, a fix for me is to set the dock magnification off, then there is no space between the dock and preview so it does not disappear (@steventheworker this is how to reproduce it)

[steventheworker]

The issue is scriptable AltTab. The recent updates (from official repo) aimed to fix memory issues by reducing the resolution of cached previews, which inadvertently caused blurry thumbnails in DockAltTab (only during 'Enable thumbnail previews'). To address this, I implemented a (heavy-handed) solution that fetches a fresh, full-sized screenshot for all DAT invocations, preventing a flicker (from blurry to high-def) when hovering over thumbnails. The slowdown is especially noticeable when you have 1+ maximized windows.

I will soon re-release the previous version with the flicker issue (for the better performance). Thank you for the reports; I will look into resolving this later this week.

[shredthaGNAR]

I thought I'd share an update that might help you fix the newest release, or at the very least provide some useful insight.

I'm running macOS 26.4 Beta with the latest builds of both AltTab (your fork, of course) and DockAltTab. I was experiencing an issue I've encountered before: the window preview would appear on the first hover over any app in the Dock, but once I clicked an icon or preview, it would stop showing previews altogether. The only way to temporarily restore functionality was to reset the Dock or go into the settings and switch the option to "Windows" or "Ubuntu," but that wasn't a real fix—it would only work for one click before reverting to the same broken behavior.

My Workaround: After reading your response and explanation regarding the AltTab rewrite and its associated issues, I decided to try downgrading AltTab while keeping DockAltTab on the same version. I started with AltTab-Scriptable-1.9.2—a semi-random choice, though it also happened to be the first build that differed from 6.6.3. The result? I'm happy to say everything is back to normal. I haven't tried any other newer versions, and perhaps I will at some point, but if it isn't broken, why fix it—especially since I don't foresee running into any issues.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that the problem does indeed stem from the newer AltTab build and not from the DockAltTab build, just as you were saying. Thanks as always!