Whenever I plug in a new USB device, the device notifier pops up (good) but steals focus from whatever I'm doing (bad). This is annoying in two ways; first if I'm typing then suddenly I'm not typing any more. Second, if I want to launch something to handle the device I've just plugged in, it causes me to need an extra mouse click, because while it's got focus, the only thing a click elsewhere on the desktop will do is to close the notifier. So instead of being able to just click once on a launcher I have to click twice.

Is there any way to stop it stealing focus? there's nothing in the (very minimal) configuration options for the notifier itself...

Try out System Settings -> Window Behavior -> Focus stealing prevention level, and see if setting it to a "Normal" or higher level helps.

And if you only want to change it for a specific "window": System Settings -> Window Behavior -> Window-Specific -> New... -> Workarounds. Check "Focus stealing prevention and choose "Force", "High/Extreme".
Then you have to set the window in Window/Window Extra tab.

At least I think that's what this setting do. If I've got it reversed, please correct me.

Hans wrote:And if you only want to change it for a specific "window": System Settings -> Window Behavior -> Window-Specific -> New... -> Workarounds. Check "Focus stealing prevention and choose "Force", "High/Extreme".
Then you have to set the window in Window/Window Extra tab.

At least I think that's what this setting do. If I've got it reversed, please correct me.

Thanks, I can see the logic behind this, but any idea what window class to set? Annoyingly, "Detect Window Properties" fails to actually detect anything when I click on the device notifier pop-up.

Weird. I just tried it, and the Device notifier doesn't steal focus here. My Focus stealing prevention level is set to "Low".

When I use "Detect Window Properties", I get:
Window class: Qt-subapplication Plasma
Window type: Override type (this doesn't seem to be right)
Window title: Qt-subapplication

Obviously, this applies to all plasma "popups" (if you chose window type "Normal").

Running KDE4 from trunk.

Hans wrote:Weird. I just tried it, and the Device notifier doesn't steal focus here. My Focus stealing prevention level is set to "Low".

When I use "Detect Window Properties", I get:
Window class: Qt-subapplication Plasma
Window type: Override type (this doesn't seem to be right)
Window title: Qt-subapplication

Obviously, this applies to all plasma "popups" (if you chose window type "Normal").

Running KDE4 from trunk.

Unfortunately no difference here, whether I use what you managed to detect for window-specific or set the general focus stealing prevention level to "extreme" (tried re-starting KDE in case that was necessary).

I'm assuming that when your posting says "Running KDE4 from trunk" that might mean you're running a newer version than my Kubuntu-supplied 4.1.3 - perhaps this is a behaviour that's been fixed in 4.2?