bspwm is unresponsive until mouse click

[Syntrait]

When a Steam context menu is closed, there is a chance of bspwm going unresponsive, causing the keyboard being unresponsive too. If I click on a window with mouse, bspwm starts working normally again.

It might seem like it's a minor issue, but if you open a Steam context menu, and then switch to a fullscreen workspace, the Steam context menu closing might trigger the bug, causing the keyboard to be unresponsive, and being stuck in the workspace. This did happen to me, and I had to switch to another TTY and pkill the game.

Environment

Distro: Arch Linux
Kernel: 6.15.7-1-cachyos-bore-lto
bspwm: 0.9.10-51-gaf3bd8b (latest git commit af3bd8b)

Video_2025-07-21_11-30-58.mp4

[ortango]

i was able to reproduce this- are you using ignore_ewmh_focus true?
setting to false works around this issue. steam has had similar issues in the past judging by the issue tracker.
i'd imagine though, that this issue involves sxhkd more then it does bspwm. bspwm socket still will accept commands and refocus when asked even when input is 'frozen' (you can do this instead of killing the game next time if you lock up as you described)

[Syntrait]

Unfortunately, setting ignore_ewmh_focus to false doesn't fix it for me. Also, it looks like dwm is also affected by this, so it's probably Steam doing something it shouldn't, and bspwm doesn't handle it properly.