Zoom keeps stealing focus

Additionally, any time someone else in a meeting shares their screen, focus is again stolen.

Which is detrimental to anyone trying to keep minutes for a meeting, or trying to resolve ongoing production issues if the meeting is about a production outage.

Cannot answer you question  i.e. What possible excuse is there for interrupting the user this way?

I have an external monitor attached to my laptop and in this way keep ZOOM on one monitor and the work I am doing on the second monitor...... 

I hope this helps!

I would @ the original response but this system requires at least 3 characters to @ someone, and they have only a 2 character name.

https://community.zoom.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/6

I agree with the OP. I work at a call center and every time I'm writing a note on a customer's account and a call comes around on Zoom, the call steals the focus as the OP says. For those that watch the keyboard while typing, this is a huge issue. They'll type a full paragraph note and look up to find out they didn't type anything or typed a few words due to a call going around that stole the focus off their typing.  According to other forums, this is a huge problem for many of us and would like a fix. As a call center representative, this is a big inconvenience and very annoying when someone is trying to place an order, and you have to ask them to repeat what they said just because another call going around in the queue interrupted your typing. Especially if they're a fast talker and in a hurry to get an order placed. I hope this helps @RobertS . As I believe this is what he was referring to. The same complaint and issue I and many other are experiencing. 

Agreed.  This behavior is just terrible.  I have lost count of the number of times I have used a keyboard shortcut to close a window only to find out Zoom has stolen focus so I end up losing the Zoom connection window instead.  

I can't see the linked post which says it's "by design", but I agree this is wrong behavior. I understand that, in general, it's not good to be multitasking during meetings. But zoom should NOT be enforcing this. Right now I am in a meeting I was included as optional on; I'm not participating, but want to overhear the discussion. I hope they don't change screensharing, because the window I'm typing in will lose focus... AGAIN.

Does zoom not trust people to be adults and pay attention when they need to?

came here looking for a way to stop this behaviour when someone else shares their screen.  Good god, can we not be trusted to switch back manually when we want to really pay attention?  This needs to be a setting so we can turn it off!!! God forbid we want to take notes during a meeting... 

I've made so many feedback submissions and talked directly with Zoom. They have no intention of changing this behavior. They believe they are the arbiter of what is good UX. Literally, any UX engineer will tell you that focus stealing without the user's consent is "Dark UX" and is a general no-no, which tells you that Zoom doesn't know what they're doing.

Focus stealing is a cardinal sin. Whomever decided this was a good idea SHOULD be fired. Not because of the wrong decision, but because they don't know what they're doing in the tech industry and should be knocked down a few pegs and have to earn their way up to making decisions in tech.

This is ridiculous. How hard would it be to give people a choice about whether they want zoom to steal the focus from whatever they are doing. I'm always doing work related to the zoom session when it steals the focus. Again, why not give us a choice?  

Just adding my voice here in the hope Zoom wakes up, listens to their revenue stream, and recognizes an option to disable this behavior is highly desirable to many in said revenue stream.

Focus stealing by any app is the ultimate in hubris.  I am perfectly capable of deciding my priorities, and sometimes, your app just ain't it regardless of your opinion of yourself.