I think this inconsistent state might be the cause of or related to some harder-to-reproduce "attempted to do X in sole/inactive (mini)buffer/window" (or something like that) errors down the line with Ivy minibuffer completion. They happen seemingly at random when exiting the minibuffer, perhaps multiple times an hour in a busy editing session. Once a frame reaches this inactive-but-selected minibuffer state, subsequent minibuffer sessions are often problematic, so my workaround is to simply delete that frame and hope it doesn't reoccur for a while. One thing that feels like it reduced the frequency of these issues was disabling winner-mode and using {next,previous}-buffer instead, FWIW. This has been happening for a while now, I guess since the recent overhaul of minibuffer behaviour (which is why I'm CCing Alan). OTOH I can reliably reproduce the narrower issue in this report, so let me know if you'd like me to test anything. Thanks, -- Basil In GNU Emacs 28.0.50 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, cairo version 1.16.0, Xaw3d scroll bars) of 2021-05-04 built on tia Repository revision: b8f88d76ea79b12d600a090f76cea9d6ec3818f2 Repository branch: master Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.12011000 System Description: Debian GNU/Linux bullseye/sid Recent messages: For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a. graphic-only Making completion list... Quit Configured using: 'configure 'CC=ccache gcc' 'CFLAGS=-O2 -march=native' --config-cache --prefix=/home/blc/.local --enable-checking=structs --with-x-toolkit=lucid --with-file-notification=yes --with-x' Configured features: ACL CAIRO DBUS FREETYPE GIF GLIB GMP GNUTLS GPM GSETTINGS HARFBUZZ JPEG JSON LCMS2 LIBOTF LIBSELINUX LIBSYSTEMD LIBXML2 M17N_FLT MODULES NOTIFY INOTIFY PDUMPER PNG RSVG SECCOMP SOUND THREADS TIFF TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS X11 XAW3D XDBE XIM XPM LUCID ZLIB Important settings: value of $LANG: en_IE.UTF-8 value of $XMODIFIERS: @im=ibus locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix Major mode: InactiveMinibuffer Minor modes in effect: tooltip-mode: t global-eldoc-mode: t electric-indent-mode: t mouse-wheel-mode: t tool-bar-mode: t menu-bar-mode: t file-name-shadow-mode: t global-font-lock-mode: t blink-cursor-mode: t auto-composition-mode: t auto-encryption-mode: t auto-compression-mode: t line-number-mode: t transient-mark-mode: t Load-path shadows: None found. Features: (shadow sort mail-extr emacsbug message rmc puny dired dired-loaddefs rfc822 mml mml-sec epa derived epg epg-config gnus-util rmail rmail-loaddefs auth-source cl-seq eieio eieio-core cl-macs eieio-loaddefs password-cache json map text-property-search time-date subr-x seq byte-opt gv bytecomp byte-compile cconv mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse rfc2231 mailabbrev gmm-utils mailheader cl-loaddefs cl-lib sendmail rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util mail-prsvr mail-utils iso-transl tooltip eldoc electric uniquify ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel term/x-win x-win term/common-win x-dnd tool-bar dnd fontset image regexp-opt fringe tabulated-list replace newcomment text-mode elisp-mode lisp-mode prog-mode register page tab-bar menu-bar rfn-eshadow isearch easymenu timer select scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax font-core term/tty-colors frame minibuffer cl-generic cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese eucjp-ms cp51932 hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese composite charscript charprop case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev obarray cl-preloaded nadvice button loaddefs faces cus-face macroexp files window text-properties overlay sha1 md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable backquote threads dbusbind inotify lcms2 dynamic-setting system-font-setting font-render-setting cairo x-toolkit x multi-tty make-network-process emacs) Memory information: ((conses 16 79371 6927) (symbols 48 6593 1) (strings 32 19873 1765) (string-bytes 1 631488) (vectors 16 12627) (vector-slots 8 182958 8008) (floats 8 31 41) (intervals 56 10451 4) (buffers 992 11))