How to keep matplotlib (python) window in background?

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I have a python / matplotlib application that frequently updates a plot with new data coming in from a measurement instrument. The plot window should not change from background to foreground (or vice versa) with respect to other windows on my desktop when the plot is updated with new data.

This worked as desired with Python 3 on a machine running Ubuntu 16.10 with matplotlib 1.5.2rc. However, on a different machine with Ubuntu 17.04 and matplotlib 2.0.0, the figure window pops to the front every time the plot is updated with new data.

How can I control the window foreground/background behavior and keep the window focus when updating the plot with new data?

Here's a code example illustrating my plotting routine:

import matplotlib
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from time import time
from random import random

print ( matplotlib.__version__ )

# set up the figure
fig = plt.figure()
plt.xlabel('Time')
plt.ylabel('Value')
plt.ion()

# plot things while new data is generated:
t0 = time()
t = []
y = []
while True:
    t.append( time()-t0 )
    y.append( random() )
    fig.clear()
    plt.plot( t , y )
    plt.pause(1)
matplotlib window background focus python
2 Answers

For the tkinter backend (matplotlib.use("TkAgg")), using flush_events is not sufficient: you also need to call fig.canvas.draw_idle() before each fig.canvas.flush_events(). As @samlaf wrote, the same holds for the Qt5Agg backend.

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