Macbook Air randomly closes me out of things while I type

April 1, 2022 2:30 PM

Lately on my 2019 Macbook Air, the window I'm typing into will just randomly minimize or close while I'm typing. The programs themselves do not crash or freeze, they just...go away. It just happened now typing this question! It never happens when I am NOT typing (e.g., if I'm clicking, scrolling, etc.) I haven't been able to find any description of this while googling -- I think I must not know the correct terms for what's happening. Has anyone run into this, or have any idea what is happening?

In general I've found the 2019 Airs to be really buggy and shitty so I thought I might see something on the mac forums but either nobody's complained about this or I'm using the wrong keywords.

Possibly relevant details:
-I'm using a peripheral keyboard, but this has been happening with the laptop's own keyboard as well
-Work laptop running Big Sur, no recent updates that I'm aware of
-When this happens, I'm never touching the mouse (also peripheral) or the touchpad.
-Nothing crashes or is lost--If I'm typing an email in Outlook, the email will close but it remains in my Drafts. If I'm typing in Word, or in Firefox or Chrome, the window just minimizes or slides behind another program window.

In other words, it is as though I'm accidentally typing a shortcut that minimizes or closes the active window, but ... I can't imagine how??

BONUS: sometimes instead it just deletes the last few words I've typed!

Halp? It's hardly a catastrophe but it's very irritating, especially when I'm trying to screenshare or work in a collaborative file.

posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese to Technology (8 answers total)

When this happened to me with my windows laptop, I turned off the mouse touchpad and it never happened again. Unlike you, I was always typing on the laptop's keyboard which is right above the mouse touchpad. I never figured out what I was doing but it had to be tied to the touchpad.
posted by RoadScholar at 3:20 PM on April 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

Did you get your nails done recently? 😂 This started happening to me after I got long nails, and I assume I’m accidentally hitting some random combo of buttons that minimizes or closes the window (Google says it’s Command+ W).

This probably isn’t helpful at all but…maybe?

Edit: Just saw the comment about the touch pad and I think this is actually my issue! May not be yours but I appreciate the help in solving my own mac mystery.
posted by a.steele at 3:23 PM on April 1, 2022

Response by poster: Did you get your nails done recently? 😂 This started happening to me after I got long nails

Ha! But no--in fact, my nails are even a bit shorter than usual these days. FWIW I also haven't taken to wearing any kind of new jewelry on my hands or wrists.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 3:26 PM on April 1, 2022

I wonder if you've activated some accidental swipe gestures on the trackpad. Mac calls these hot corners and gestures. Here's some more info about them, and how to turn them off.

They might also be going to another workspace (spaces)? These are essentially other virtual desktops.
posted by hydra77 at 3:31 PM on April 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

Any chance you have sticky keys turned on? That would make it easier to accidentally type a keyboard shortcut. (If you're not familiar with that setting, it lets you type shortcut combinations one key at a time, so for example if you accidentally hit the cmd key and then typed, say, a w after that, that would be the same as hitting cmd-w at the same time.)
posted by trig at 4:27 PM on April 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

Though it has happened much, much more frequently with virtually every non-Apple laptop I've had running Linux, it still happens (rarely) with my 2020 MacBook Air. It all has to do with the touchpad, though I do wonder what's going on with it when you're typing with an external keyboard. I'm afraid I have no more help for you.
posted by lhauser at 6:20 PM on April 1, 2022

Any chance you're hitting the function keys? Sometimes those have default maximize or minimize functions.
posted by Lady Li at 7:04 PM on April 1, 2022

This is a long shot, but: sometimes on my MacBook I've discovered that I've somehow switched to an international keyboard, and unpredictable things happen.

You can probably find out what keyboard you're using by looking at the icons in the upper right. (Weirdly, I don't actually see any section of System Preferences that shows you which keyboard layout you've got selected.)

If Minimize is set to Cmd-M, it could be that; or if it's set to something else, and you're somehow ending up with a different language's keyboard layout that logs a Minimize keyboard shortcut, it seems like that might cause what you're experiencing.
posted by kristi at 4:45 PM on April 5, 2022