Accessibility: Give each Alt+Tab tile real keyboard focus so ZoomText (and Magnifier) can follow it

[talabudi]

First—great app!
Feature request: when the switcher UI is open, the currently highlighted tile should receive actual keyboard focus so assistive tech (e.g., ZoomText’s “Follow Focus” and Windows Magnifier’s “Follow keyboard focus”) can pan/zoom to the active tile.

Right now the highlight changes visually, but the system focus appears to remain on the underlying foreground window; ZoomText doesn’t move to the switcher UI, which makes it hard to use for low-vision users.
Motivation / Use case

I use ZoomText, which tracks keyboard focus (and/or caret) to move the magnified viewport. If each AltAppSwitcher tile became the focused element as I cycle through apps, ZoomText would “jump” to the highlighted tile automatically, making the switcher accessible.

Steps to Reproduce
Start ZoomText (or Windows Magnifier with “Follow keyboard focus” enabled).
Open AltAppSwitcher and hold Alt while pressing Tab/arrows to change the selection.
Observe that the highlight changes but ZoomText/Magnifier does not pan to the tile.
Expected behavior
When a tile becomes selected, it also becomes the focused element (HasKeyboardFocus = true / IsKeyboardFocusable = true in UIA terms).
Assistive tech that follows focus pans to the focused tile’s bounding rectangle.
Actual behavior
Visual selection changes, but system focus remains elsewhere; assistive tech doesn’t track the tile.

[josser900]

Yes this would be an appreciated feature, I also use Zoomtext and this app is great for that (hate the huge alt-tab from Windows 11, it's difficult to use if you can only see a small part of the screen because of the magnification level).
Right now I've set the hotkeys in AltAppSwitcher to Alt-Tab and in Zoomtext I've set Alt-Space to jump to center of screen to be able to see the switcher UI.

[hdlx]

Thanks for the detailled feedback 👍 Please give latest pre-release a try, it should be better 🙂

[josser900]

I tested it with Zoomtext and the Windows Magnifier (both in full screen zoom, not lens or partial zoom). The switcher gui doesn't get focus (the magnified area does not move/jump to the switcher gui). And after one alt-tab key press the gui seems to freeze and after the second alt-tab it seems to crash and the Windows alt-tab comes back again.

[hdlx]

Thanks for the feedback. I believe I was able to repro and fix the crash on latest pre-release.
On my end, magnifier focus follows tile, but the behavior is a bit inconsistent.
I'm investigating further.