sbmpost / Autoraise

When you hover a window it will be raised to the front (with a delay of your choosing) and gets the focus. There is also an option to warp the mouse to the center of the activated window, using the cmd-tab key combination for example. To use this tool, copy the AutoRaise binary to your /Applications/ folder making sure it is executable (chmod 700 AutoRaise). Then double click it from within Finder. To quickly toggle it on/off you can use the applescript below and paste it into an automator service workflow. Then bind the created service to a keyboard shortcut via System Preferences|Keyboard|Shortcuts.

Update: It is now also possible to create an app bundle (for further instructions see at the bottom of this page). If you prefer to use the app bundle version, replace "/Applications/AutoRaise" with "/Applications/AutoRaise.app" and update the applescript accordingly.

Applescript usage:

on run {input, parameters}
    tell application "Finder"
        if exists of application process "AutoRaise" then
            quit application "/Applications/AutoRaise"
            display notification "AutoRaise Stopped"
        else
            launch application "/Applications/AutoRaise"
            display notification "AutoRaise Started"
        end if
    end tell
    return input
end run

Command line usage:

./AutoRaise -delay 2 -warpX 0.5 -warpY 0.5

Note1: If no delay has been specified on the command line, AutoRaise will look for an AutoRaise.delay file in the home folder. It will also check for the existence of an AutoRaise.warp file. This is particularly useful for the applescript usage as described above because 'launch application' does not support command line arguments. The delay should be specified in units of 20ms. For example to specify a delay of 20ms run this command once in a terminal:

echo 1 > ~/AutoRaise.delay

To enable warp, run this command:

echo "0.5 0.5" > ~/AutoRaise.warp

Note2: If you are not comfortable running the provided binary, then you can compile it yourself using this command:

g++ -O2 -Wall -fobjc-arc -o AutoRaise AutoRaise.mm -framework AppKit

Note3: To create the AutoRaise.app bundle, in a bash terminal type:

./create-app-bundle.sh

Beware that AutoRaise.app runs on the background and can only be stopped again via "Activity Monitor" (or the applescript above). Also command line arguments are ignored which means the app bundle version relies totally on the AutoRaise.delay and AutoRaise.warp files in your home folder.

See also https://stackoverflow.com/questions/98310/focus-follows-mouse-plus-auto-raise-on-mac-os-x