12-09-2011, 03:25 PM

Hi all, Recently 'upgraded' to Lion. Other than an increased frequency of system lockouts and spinning beach balls, most things seemed to work ok.

Now two months later, the cmd-tab app switcher all of a sudden stops working. It still appears when cmd-tab is pressed, but when I select an app it doesn't switch to it.

In addition, clicking on a dock icon doesn't switch to that app either. The current visible app window turns grey but won't switch to the app I selected. I can switch to an app only if I click on it's dock icon TWICE.

Strange and annoying. I NEED cmd-tab. Any ideas?? Thanks

12-09-2011, 08:14 PM

Let's try this:

Boot to your Recovery partition: Hold down the OPTION key and reboot the machine, choose the Recovery partition. After the Recovery menu comes up, select Disk Utility. From Disk Utility, select "repair permissions". After it's finished, reboot back to OS X Lion. Try the Cmd Tab again.

12-10-2011, 09:51 AM

Thanks chscag!! That did it. A bunch of files in System/Library/CoreServices had messed up permissions. Just out of curiosity, what would cause this to happen? I did a clean install of Lion only about two months ago and I'm not one to go poking around in system files.

02-23-2012, 08:57 PM

Sorry to bring up an old thread but I've recently had a similar problem. I tried what you said chscag but that didn't do anything. I can do command tab and it shows up but when I try and select an app it just deselects the current window. I have Mission control set up with most apps assigned to a different space. I can switch to an app that is not assigned to a space without a problem but it's switching to the ones in a different space that is. Not sure what other information you might need to figure this one out. Thanks for your help.