JavaFX How to bring Dialog/Alert to the front of the screen

Question

I want to force an Alert to be on top of other applications. Alerts seems to be lacking a setAlwaysOnTop function.

I have seen this post: JavaFX 2.2 Stage always on top.

I have tried:

1. create a new stage and stage.setAlwaysOnTop(true), then alert.initOwner(stage).
2. create a new stage and stage.initModality(Modality.APPLICATION_MODAL), then alert.initOwner(stage).

Does anyone know how to achieve this?

Edit: I am using Java 8.

Let say I have safari opened, and it is being focused. I want to bring the Alert to the top of the screen, in front of safari, when I call its showAndWait() function.

Solution 1

You could "steal" the DialogPane from a Alert and show it in a utility Stage. For this window you can set the alwaysOnTop property the usual way:

Alert alert = new Alert(Alert.AlertType.WARNING, "I Warn You!", ButtonType.OK, ButtonType.CANCEL);
DialogPane root = alert.getDialogPane();

Stage dialogStage = new Stage(StageStyle.UTILITY);

for (ButtonType buttonType : root.getButtonTypes()) {
    ButtonBase button = (ButtonBase) root.lookupButton(buttonType);
    button.setOnAction(evt -> {
        root.setUserData(buttonType);
        dialogStage.close();
    });
}

// replace old scene root with placeholder to allow using root in other Scene
root.getScene().setRoot(new Group());

root.setPadding(new Insets(10, 0, 10, 0));
Scene scene = new Scene(root);

dialogStage.setScene(scene);
dialogStage.initModality(Modality.APPLICATION_MODAL);
dialogStage.setAlwaysOnTop(true);
dialogStage.setResizable(false);
dialogStage.showAndWait();
Optional<ButtonType> result = Optional.ofNullable((ButtonType) root.getUserData());
System.out.println("result: "+result.orElse(null));

Solution 2

 Alert alert = new Alert(Alert.AlertType.WARNING, "I Warn You!", ButtonType.OK, ButtonType.CANCEL);

 Stage stage = (Stage) alert.getDialogPane().getScene().getWindow();
 stage.setAlwaysOnTop(true);
 stage.toFront(); // not sure if necessary

Solution 3

I have tried fabians and claimoars solutions and simplified them to:

((Stage) dialog.getDialogPane().getScene().getWindow()).setAlwaysOnTop(true);

This works in my Eclipse / JavaFX app.

Comments

[ali shreef]

make sure you update your jdk and java tools and import for alert

[Roshana Pitigala]

Works just fine even without stage.toFront();.

[Roshana Pitigala]

This won't work even with an updated jdk. javafx.scene.control.Alert does not become alwaysOnTop automatically when the parent stage is OnTop unless you figure out a way to do so.

[Kefirchiks]

Thanks. Works great!

[MINDoSOFT]

At first I tried it without stage.toFront(); and it didn't work. Then I tried it with stage.toFront() and it worked! Thank you very much for this solution! Afterwards I saw that I forgot to call alert.initOwner(App.getPrimaryStage()); and this was causing the bug in my case.

[VijayKumar]

Its 2020 and I found this very helpful for setting the stage to top of an alert dialog.

[trilogy]

In my case, stage.toFront(); was necessary.