Yet another Teams Flickering Issue

[swirle13]

Hey all,

I went through all the closed issues regarding Teams flickering and tried all of the solutions and I wasn't successful.

Issues:

• Teams flickers only when moving mouse and only over certain parts of the UI that can contain text.
• Moving mouse over parts of UI that don't cause flickering also don't trigger focus
• "Join meeting" and active meeting window not being autofocused
• May be related to Libre office preferences + flickering. #220, though this doesn't involve dialog boxes
• May also be related to Teams Emoji flickering (Teams emoji react flickering #236) as trying to use message context menus causes flickering as well. Strangely

Videos (click to expand):

I have Teams split full screen with Outlook and AutoRaise prefs for correct behavior examples next to Teams.

Screen.Recording.2026-01-08.at.5.13.51.PM.mov

Joining meeting window not being autofocused. Behaves same for a meeting window, once joined

Screen.Recording.2026-01-08.at.6.00.55.PM.mov

Context menu flickering

Screen.Recording.2026-01-08.at.6.12.09.PM.mov

Info

• macOS Tahoe 26.2
• AutoRaise v5.5.0, 2025-09-17
• Window raise disabled
• Delay window focus is 0ms
• Teams version 25306.805.4102.7211, app name "Microsoft Teams"

Fix attempts:

• Added \s\| Microsoft Teams to "Ignore titles" and confirmed with enter. Flickering still occurs
• Added Microsoft Teams to "Ignore apps", successfully ignores Teams, but I want it to auto focus teams
• Tried the advice here to add com.microsoft.teams2 to "Stay focused bundle ids" but Teams never releases focus, reverting to natural macOS behavior without AutoRaise.
• Tried the advice provided by sbmpost here to build the app with a few flags toggled and verbose mode enabled. There were 6 warnings in the terminal regarding deprecated functions (see additional info for details). When ./AutoRaise was ran in the second half of the command, it resulted in a pop-up stating "AutoRaise is damaged and can't be opened". It wasn't caught in security center so there was no way to authorize the file to run, so appears the binary

Additional info:

• Flickering happens whether full screened or in a window

• I have menu bar and dock hidden, using two external monitors, laptop shut

  • Appears to behave the same regardless of menu hidden or showing, full screen or not, and dock hidden or not, even with only a single screen, per this comment thread

• Terminal output from the command

  make CXXFLAGS="-DOLD_ACTIVATION_METHOD -DEXPERIMENTAL_FOCUS_FIRST" && ./AutoRaise -focusDelay 1 -verbose true

  Output

  g++ -DOLD_ACTIVATION_METHOD -DEXPERIMENTAL_FOCUS_FIRST -O2 -Wall -fobjc-arc -D"NS_FORMAT_ARGUMENT(A)=" -D"SKYLIGHT_AVAILABLE=1" -o AutoRaise AutoRaise.mm -framework AppKit -F /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks -framework SkyLight
  AutoRaise.mm:183:9: warning: 'SameProcess' is deprecated: first deprecated in macOS 10.9 [-Wdeprecated-declarations]
  183 |         SameProcess(_window_psn, _focused_window_psn, &same_process);
    |         ^
  /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/HIServices.framework/Headers/Processes.h:576:1: note: 'SameProcess' has been explicitly marked deprecated here
  576 | SameProcess(
    | ^
  AutoRaise.mm:219:22: warning: 'GetProcessForPID' is deprecated: first deprecated in macOS 10.9 [-Wdeprecated-declarations]
  219 |     OSStatus error = GetProcessForPID(pid, &process);
    |                      ^
  /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/HIServices.framework/Headers/Processes.h:762:1: note: 'GetProcessForPID' has been explicitly marked deprecated here
  762 | GetProcessForPID(
    | ^
  AutoRaise.mm:220:19: warning: 'SetFrontProcessWithOptions' is deprecated: first deprecated in macOS 10.9 [-Wdeprecated-declarations]
  220 |     if (!error) { SetFrontProcessWithOptions(&process, kSetFrontProcessFrontWindowOnly); }
    |                   ^
  /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/HIServices.framework/Headers/Processes.h:554:1: note: 'SetFrontProcessWithOptions' has been explicitly marked deprecated here
  554 | SetFrontProcessWithOptions(
    | ^
  AutoRaise.mm:658:1: warning: non-void function does not return a value [-Wreturn-type]
  658 | }
    | ^
  AutoRaise.mm:1135:46: warning: 'GetProcessForPID' is deprecated: first deprecated in macOS 10.9 [-Wdeprecated-declarations]
   1135 |                             OSStatus error = GetProcessForPID(frontmost_pid, &focusedWindow_psn);
    |                                              ^
  /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/HIServices.framework/Headers/Processes.h:762:1: note: 'GetProcessForPID' has been explicitly marked deprecated here
  762 | GetProcessForPID(
    | ^
  AutoRaise.mm:1165:46: warning: 'GetProcessForPID' is deprecated: first deprecated in macOS 10.9 [-Wdeprecated-declarations]
   1165 |                             OSStatus error = GetProcessForPID(mouseWindow_pid, &mouseWindow_psn);
    |                                              ^
  /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/HIServices.framework/Headers/Processes.h:762:1: note: 'GetProcessForPID' has been explicitly marked deprecated here
  762 | GetProcessForPID(
    | ^
  6 warnings generated.
  ./create-app-bundle.sh
  make: *** [AutoRaise.app] Killed: 9

I hope I've provided enough details to help replicate this. May be related to the new update, but I only downloaded this application after updating to macOS 26.2 today, so I'm not able to provide a comparison.

[sbmpost]

@swirle13

Hi there. So I found some time to test on my machine. I installed version 26004.403.4267.4118 on Sequoia 15.6. This is a different setup than yours. However what I did notice when I started a video meeting was:

1. The window that showed the camera didn't flicker
2. The window title was like "Meeting with ..."

The workaround implemented in AutoRaise works by reading the window title, and if it matches a certain regular expression, it will not focus/raise that particular window. So you might want to experiment with a regular expression other than "\s| Microsoft Teams". For example "Meeting with \s". Hope this helps.

[swirle13]

Hey thanks for diving in and attempting troubleshooting. Shame you weren't able to replicate the behavior, but I'll try your suggestion. In the meantime, using 50ms delay has been doing great in preventing any flickering.