How can I disable the Option+click hiding behaviour?

In Mac OS X Mountain Lion at least, if you Option+click ( Alt+click ) on another a window of another app, this will make the other application to gain focus, and the current app to be hidden as if you'd pressed Command+H.

Is there any way to disable this behaviour? Perhaps with some defaults write like command entered in a terminal?

I'd like to use Option+click for some different behaviour (moving windows by Option+clicking anywhere on them, using a third-party tool, Zoom2), and having Option+click trigger the hiding behaviour instead is very inconvenient.

Solution 1:

One option would be to remap Option+Left Click to something else using KeyRemap4MacBook. It might not have exactly what you want, but I think it's not hard to add new shortcuts (or ask the author to add them for you). One option that I saw was Option+Left Click -> Middle Click. You could then (assumedly) set middle click to do what you want in Zoom2, and retain the Option+Click shortcut.

Of course, if you do this, it will change Option+Click everywhere, even if you aren't clicking on another window.

Solution 2:

As far as I know there is no way to disable this behavior. You can command-click to manipulate any window in the background without focusing it or bringing it to the front. (This has been around since classic Mac OS.) You can indeed combine commandalt to alt-click a window item in the background without triggering the application hiding.