make matplotlib plotting window pop up as the active one

I was bothered by exactly the same problem. I found finally a solution (in pylab mode, with qt4agg backend):

get_current_fig_manager().window.raise_()

fig = gcf()
fig.canvas.manager.window.raise_()

Regards, Markus

For me (OSX 10.10.2, Matplotlib 1.4.3), what works is changing the matplotlib backend to TkAgg. Before importing pyplot or anything, go:

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('TkAgg')

Plot windows now pop-up, and can be Command-Tab'ed to.

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