Make interactive matplotlib window not pop to front on each update (Windows 7)

Question

Today I upgraded matplotlib to version 2.0.2, after not upgrading for possibly 3 years.

Now I have the problem that in interactive plots the window always comes to t

Answer 1

It is April 2019 and the mypause() function (copied from the upto date pyplot implementation) for Matplotlib 3.0.3 should look more like

import time
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
def mypause(interval):
    manager = plt._pylab_helpers.Gcf.get_active()
    if manager is not None:
        canvas = manager.canvas
        if canvas.figure.stale:
            canvas.draw_idle()        
        #plt.show(block=False)
        canvas.start_event_loop(interval)
    else:
        time.sleep(interval)

After some testing (Qt5 backend/Spyder/Windows 7 64bit) the calls that do the trick for me are:

#plt.pause(0.001) #Brings plot to foreground
#fig.canvas.draw() #Does not work
#plt.draw_all() #Does not work
#plt.draw() #Does not work
#fig.canvas.flush_events() #Updates only if I click the figure 
#import time; time.sleep(0.001) #Does not help flush_events()
#fig.canvas.draw_idle() #Does not work by itself
#fig.canvas.start_event_loop(0.001) #Does not work by itself
#mypause(0.001) #Works!

#Works!
fig.canvas.draw_idle()
fig.canvas.start_event_loop(0.001)

Were fig is your figure object. Either of both alone didn't work in my case. According to the animation documentation this is essentially what FuncAnimation does.