Is this restricted to a certain kind of app? Arc, extension, shortcut, etc?

ginko,

Oshima showed me a similar bug in ToT, except no apps will launch.

Also context menus were not showing up when long pressing or two-finger-tapping on the app icons. Does this also occur for this bug? If so the root cause is likely the same.

This is different. It's an already launched app that refuses to refocus if you tap the launcher icon.

Also in current ToT only the <txt> app is affected.
I actually recommend removing the release blocker and lowering to P2/P3

It looks like this might be specific to the txt app, and you might want to take a look at this. I can't get it to repro with any other app right now

Sorry have been on sick leave. Will take a look.

I can repro this and similarly it only seems to affect the txt app. This is a default-installed Chrome app right? Are there any other default-installed Chrome apps? Any other properties specific to to txt app compared to the others?

Not sure about all the 'preinstalled' apps. This seems to be a list of all the default apps for opening certain file types https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/chrome/browser/chromeos/file_manager/file_tasks.cc?l=125 

This file defines the app IDs (these correspond to the IDs in the web store) https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/chrome/browser/chromeos/file_manager/app_id.h

E.g. default app for opening images is the Gallery app. However the gallery app, and all except the text app, don't seem to be able to be opened via an icon at all, only by opening the files directly. The File Manager itself is in this list though and can be opened from an icon. I feel like that would be a special case though.

I had a chat with +benwells@, who had a theory: when the app is launched, Chrome OS will send an event that is handled by the Chrome App's background page. The event allows the app to customise its launch (e.g. by focusing an existing window). It's possible the txt app doesn't handle the event that's being sent when Chrome OS is in tablet mode, and hence it looks like nothing is happening.

Can you investigate the events being fired into the txt app's background page on launch? It may not be handling them right in tablet mode.

I can have a look if you like. Where is the source for the app's background page?

Background page source is at https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/text-app/blob/master/js/background.js

Thanks for the help! I'm on leave today will have a closer look tomorrow

I would expect the default behaviour on launch in the absence of an explicit event handler to be to navigate to any already open window

Hey Everyone, I saw the title change and just wanted to clarify:

Even when outside of tablet mode, the TXT app will fail to focus.

For example, if you have the TXT app open underneath another window, clicking the app will close the app list but fail to surface the TXT app.

Thanks for clarification ginko. I can confirm that I can repro this on a non tablet chromebook

Have written a patch to fix this here https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/text-app/pull/417

Note that this fix won't propagate to stable until a new stable version is uploaded to the web store, which won't happen until the UI refresh has gone through QA tsting etc. So I'm blocking this issue on the launch of the UI refresh. 

Bulk moving <p-1's to the next milestone because we branched to M-73.