Issue Report: Preview Pane Focus Interruption with WPS Office

[Learning Regex]

【1.5.0.1403a (x64)】

Hi Void,

I hope you're doing well!

I’d like to kindly report a usability issue that affects smooth navigation in your file explorer when certain document types are previewed via third-party handlers—particularly Kingsoft WPS Office.

When files such as .doc, .docx, .wps, .xls, .xlsx, .et, .ppt, .pptx, .dps, or even .pdf are selected with the preview pane enabled, WPS forcibly shifts keyboard focus into its preview content. As a result, arrow-key navigation (up/down/left/right) in the file list stops working until the user manually clicks back into the list—an interruption that’s especially disruptive during rapid document browsing or comparison.

This appears to be caused by how WPS implements its preview handler, which unnecessarily grabs focus during rendering. Other preview handlers (e.g., for plain text or images) don’t exhibit this behavior, so the issue seems specific to WPS—but it may not be limited to the formats I’ve tested. Since I haven’t allowed WPS to handle other file types (like PDFs or images) as default openers, I can’t confirm their preview behavior, though similar issues are likely.

More broadly, other third-party applications might also implement focus-grabbing preview handlers. Given that, I wonder if your software could proactively prevent any preview handler from stealing focus—perhaps by intercepting or suppressing focus requests when the preview pane is active. Doing so would greatly improve navigation reliability and provide a consistent user experience, regardless of which preview handler is in use.

Thank you very much for your time and for building such a thoughtful tool.

Best regards,

A user

[void]

Thank you for the feedback and issue report Learning Regex,

Everything doesn't have much control over the preview handler.

Does the issue occur in Windows Explorer?

[Learning Regex]

It works perfectly fine in Windows Explorer。

[void]

Thanks for checking Windows Explorer.

I wonder if the issue could be caused by running Everything as administrator.
-The preview host runs in another process and could have communication issues.

Please make sure Everything is installed correctly and running as a standard user:

• In Everything, from the Tools menu, click Options.
• Click the General tab on the left.
• Check Store settings and data in %APPDATA%\Everything.
• Uncheck Run as administrator.
• Check Everything Service. (Please make sure this is tick-checked and not square-checked)
• Click OK.
• Exit Everything (from the File menu, click Exit).
• Restart Everything.

Please make sure you are running the x64 version of Everything (Help -> About Everything -> Version)

[Learning Regex]

I'm certain that I'm running Everything with standard (non-administrator) privileges.

When running Everything as an administrator, WPS preview cannot be invoked。

[void]

Thanks for checking, I will install WPS office and do some tests my end..

What version of Windows are you using and what version of WPS office?

[Learning Regex]

Windows 10 Enterprise｜10.0.19045

WPS 12.1.0.24034 32位

Tip: WPS suffers from common issues found in many Chinese commercial software applications—it may forcibly associate file types, display pop-up ads, or be difficult to uninstall completely. It's recommended to test it in a secure environment. Thank you!

[void]

Thanks for the information Learning Regex,

I installed WPSOffice in a VM.

Everything 1.5.0.1404a will now set the Everything window as the foreground window when:

Everything was the foreground window when changing the focus.
The preview handler steals focus.

This is the same behavior as Windows Explorer.

[Learning Regex]

Thank you for the update! In the new version 1.5.0.1404a (x64), the issues I mentioned earlier are indeed resolved. However, I’ve noticed a couple of new behaviors:

1｜When dragging a selection rectangle with the mouse to multi-select files (with the preview pane open), the selection gets interrupted as soon as the cursor passes over a file that WPS can preview.

2｜When navigating with arrow keys past WPS-previewable files, you must move slowly—if you go too fast, focus still jumps out of the file list.

That said, the original problem no longer occurs, which is a huge improvement. Thanks again for your great work!