jQuery UI autocomplete: dropdown disappears when Chrome loses focus
When you switch to another application an onblur event will be fired by the browser which is what hides the autocomplete menu. Your best bet to accomplish this "sticky" behavior is to attach an onfocus event handler to the window and open the autocomplete menu then.
$(function() { var autocomplete = $( 'whatever' ).autocomplete(); $( window ).on( 'focus', function() { autocomplete.autocomplete( 'search' ); });});I have a live example of this here - http://jsfiddle.net/RmALY/1/show/.