How to move figure window to front of all programs?

Is there a way to force a figure window to show in front of all other windows (not just Matlab ones, but other programs)?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

If you are using MS Windows you could experiment with using the 'topmost' command in Jan's File Exchange contribution https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/31437-windowapi

[Brandon]

Works perfectly! I was already using WindowAPI for some things so this is even better. Thank you.

Answer 2

[Raph]

This question is ambiguous, but I think what "most people" would be looking for searching for an answer to this question are the following:

How to bring to the front a specific figure handle?

h = figure;
h2 = figure;

% bring figure with handle h to the front 
figure(h); 

How to bring to the front a known figure with a given name?

figure('Name','A cool figure'); % create a figure and assign a unique name
allfigs = findall(0,'Type', 'figure'); % finds the handles of figures
desiredHandle = findall(allfigs, 'Name', 'A cool figure'); % finds the handles of figure with the unique name

if numel(desiredHandle)==1 % make sure its not deleted or actually is a valid handle
    figure(desiredHandle(1));  % brings to front
end

Answer 3

[Kamil Lipinski]

Try this, it takes all figures to the front BFF

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/175273-bff

Answer 4

[DGM]

If you want the window to stay on top even if other windows are given focus, you can set that in the window manager.

% you have handle to a figure window
hfig = gcf;
inpict = imread('peppers.png');
imshow(inpict)

% bring it to the front and make it stay atop other windows
stickontop(hfig)

function stickontop(hfig)
%  STICKONTOP(HFIG)
%    Brings the specified figure window to the front and sets the
%    'always on top' flag.  Relies on wmctrl and a linux environment.
%    Docked figures are ignored.

    % cache current title
    oldtitle = get(hfig,'name');
    oldntstate = get(hfig,'numbertitle');
    
    % make the window externally identifiable
    set(hfig,'name','windowtoberaised');
    set(hfig,'numbertitle','off');
    
    % configure properties in the window manager
    pause(0.5) % wait for the WM
    system('wmctrl -r "windowtoberaised" -b add,above');
    
    % reset to old title
    set(hfig,'name',oldtitle);
    set(hfig,'numbertitle',oldntstate);
end

Of course, there are things that might cause the window to lose its "always on top" status again, so this might not be as persistent as one might hope.

A similar approach can be used to shade, minimize, or maximize windows, or move windows between workspaces, and it doesn't rely on version-dependent figure properties.