RequestFocus in TextField doesn't work

At the time of initialize() controls are not yet ready to handle focus.

You can try next trick:

@Override
public void initialize(URL url, ResourceBundle rb) {
    Platform.runLater(new Runnable() {
        @Override
        public void run() {
            tf.requestFocus();
        }
    });
}

For tricky complex applications (like Pavel_K has in the comments) you may want to repeat this routine several times and call method line next one:

private void repeatFocus(Node node) {
    Platform.runLater(() -> {
        if (!node.isFocused()) {
            node.requestFocus();
            repeatFocus(node);
        }
    });
}

Note this is the undocumented approach and it may be wise to add a limit for repetitions to avoid endless loop if something changed or broke in future Java releases. Better to lose focus than a whole app. :)

---

Example with the described threshold:

@Override
public void requestFocus() {
  requestFocus( getNode(), 3 );
}

private void requestFocus( final Node node, final int max ) {
  if( max > 0 ) {
    runLater(
        () -> {
          if( !node.isFocused() ) {
            node.requestFocus();
            requestFocus( node, max - 1 );
          }
        }
    );
  }
}

If you requestFocus(); after initializing the scene, it will work!

Like this:

Stage stage = new Stage();
GridPane grid = new GridPane();
//... add buttons&stuff to pane

Scene scene = new Scene(grid, 800, 600);

TEXTFIELD.requestFocus();

stage.setScene(scene);
stage.show();

I hope this helps. :)

The exact same answer as @Sergey Grinev. Make sure your version of java is up-to-date (JDK 1.8 or later).

Platform.runLater(()->myTextField.requestFocus());