Something strange is happening when I'm creating new emails or calendar appointments in the Outlook desktop app on Windows 10.

When I hit Ctrl+N to create either a new email or a new calendar appointment, the new window will pop up for a moment and then disappear - FocusLock will bring the main Outlook email/calendar window back to the front, covering up the new email/appointment.

The weird thing is that this only happens sometimes, not always. If I Alt+Tab to the new email/appointment and then Alt+Tab back to Outlook, then the behaviour corrects itself; if I press Ctrl+N again, the problem no longer occurs. In both cases, the new email/appointment window appears as a separate entry on my TaskBar, so I'm not sure what the difference is...

First let me say: this could be the greatest application ever created! Focus stealing is the devil, and this simple tool could finally put an end a lifetime of misery for millions of poor souls (ok maybe that's an exaggeration, but only a small one!). So bravo :)

Whilst the existing functionality does seem to work as intended, it does not solve the problem completely. There is still the potential to start entering input immediately after an unexpected focus-switch event... this has happened to me many times, to much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Can you think of a way to block input to a process immediately after it gains focus? Preferably with some kind of 'flash' if input is received during this lock-out interval, to alert the user that they just dodged a bullet and should stop typing/clicking stat. The lock-out interval should also be extended each time input is received in case they are not looking at the screen, and perhaps a warning symbol should come up which remains onscreen for a few seconds.

Perhaps to achieve this your app could temporarily switch focus to itself after every non-user-initiated focus switch? (are you able to differentiate user-initiated focus switches? maybe it doesn't matter)