Quick Accent minimizes active games

[jasonfisherjlf]

Microsoft PowerToys version

0.62.0

Running as admin

• Yes

Area(s) with issue?

Quick Accent

Steps to reproduce

1. Enable Quick Accent with the default settings (Activation key: Both; Input delay: 200)
2. Play just about any game (First Person Shooters are the worst)
3. Press 'a' (which is 'left' in most FPS games) along with space (which is 'jump' in most FPS games)
4. The game will minimize

✔️ Expected Behavior

I wouldn't expect Quick Accent to kick you out of games.

❌ Actual Behavior

Quick Accent kicks you out of games when the Activation key combo is pressed.
Disabling Quick Accent immediately remedies the issue. Also changing to just arrows greatly reduces the chance of it happening in games. However, pressing the Activation key combo will still kick you out.

PROPOSED SOLUTIONS:
A) Add a "Do not activate when Game Mode is on" option. (same as "Always On Top" and "Mouse utilities")
B) Find a way to allow Quick Accent to work within a game so that the pop-up menu doesn't force you out of game mode.
c) If there is no text input being focused, don't activate when the Activation key combo is pressed.

Other Software

Windows 10 Pro (19044.1889)
Game experiencing the most issues: Blizzard Overwatch

[Jay-o-Way]

@damienleroy does Quick Accent use some kind of AutoHotkey technology perhaps?

[damienleroy]

No AutoHotKey technology. But the display of the selector creating some trouble when a full screen program is launched.
I already got 2 issues about that damienleroy/PowerAccent#16 (with this one is 3).
We need to add an option to disable the feature if a fullscreen app is running.

[damienleroy]

An improvement is ongoing: damienleroy/PowerAccent#29. After that we would be able to adapt it in PowerToys.
Same behavior as "Find my mouse" when the checkbox for disabling option is active.

[taras-janea]

@jasonfisherjlf thank you for your report.

We've considered the options you've suggested and in the next release 0.65 we are adding possibility to disable QuickAccent for specific apps in the scope of #21531.
Would it help you to resolve the issue described?

/needinfo

[jasonfisherjlf]

@taras-janea Yes that would patch the core symptom. It would be great to have better integration with apps instead of simply disabling the tool for the app, but I completely understand that such a fix would take much longer to implement.

Thank you for tackling the issue.