Moving mouse pointer from window on screen 1 to empty workspace on screen 2 keeps focus on window when using gaps >0

Welcome

• Yes, I'm using the latest major release or the current development version. These are the only supported versions.
• Yes, I've searched similar issues and discussions on GitHub and didn't find any.

Current Behavior

I use a dual screen setup. Screen 1 have 1 window open. Screen 2 is empty. I have gaps inner 5. (anything >0 will trigger this). Moving mouse pointer from the window on screen 1 to the empty workspace on screen 2 keeps focus on the window on screen 1, instead of shifting focus to screen 2.

Note: Adding a gaps outer -5 seems to reduce the occurrences somewhat but they're still there. smart_gaps seems to have no effect.

Expected Behavior

The focus should shift to screen 2's empty workspace as seen with gaps inner 0.

Reproduction Instructions

(as explained in "Current Behavior" above)

i3 version

Binary i3 version:  4.25.1 (2026-02-06) © 2009 Michael Stapelberg and contributors
Running i3 version: 4.25.1 (2026-02-06) (pid 4536)
Loaded i3 config:
  /home/.../.config/i3/config (main) (last modified: Mon 01 Jun 2026 11:54:51 PM CEST, 1095 seconds ago)

The i3 binary you just called: /usr/bin/i3
The i3 binary you are running: i3

Config file

# Reproducible with default +
gaps inner 5

Linux distribution & Version

Gentoo

Are you using a compositor?

picom

Logfile

No response