Changing window selection behavior in the taskbar

akadmon · Nov 16, 2009

When you click on (or hover above) an icon of an active program that has multiple windows open, a "bar" containing representations of these open windows pops up, which forces me to then decide which one to click on, even though in 99% of the cases I want to go to the one I was working in last ( I think this is true of how most people work). To accomplish this, I have to hold CTRL when clicking on the program icon in the taskbar. Is there a way to reverse this behavior? In other words, I would like CTRL+click to bring up the window selection "bar", and a single click (with no modifier key pressed) to take me to the last window I was working in.

akadmon · Nov 16, 2009

Yay! I got the guys stumped! Either that or all you SF gurus are still busy working on a solution

MrJukes · Nov 17, 2009

Create HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced!LastActiveClick=1 and restart explorer. This will swap the ctrl+click behavior to be the default.

nuspieds · Nov 17, 2009

Cool! It works!

Thanks for the fix. This should have been the default in the first place.

MrJukes · Nov 17, 2009

Touch users would not have been happy with that default.

akadmon · Nov 17, 2009

MrJukes said:
Create HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced!LastActiveClick=1 and restart explorer. This will swap the ctrl+click behavior to be the default.

Thanks! Unfortunately, I know squat about making changes to the Registry. How do I do this?

MrJukes · Nov 18, 2009

Launch regedit.exe
Navigate in the left tree control to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
Go to Edit->New->DWORD (32-bit) Value
Name the value LastActiveClick
Hit enter to assign the value and change it to 1
Restart explorer and you're good to go.

Mark · Nov 18, 2009

For anyone who doesn't want to do this themselves I made a Registry Hack to enable or disable this feature.

akadmon · Nov 18, 2009

Thanks, it works! I had to reboot to get it to stick though -- don't know any other way to restart Explorer. How do I put a check mark on this thread? You guys deserve to be recognized for the work you did.

This is really a neat trick. I'm shocked MSFT did not included this as an option in the taskbar properties panel. I'm willing to bet most people would prefer this (single click taking you to the last window you were in) to be the default behavior.

Jonathan_King · Nov 18, 2009

akadmon said:
Thanks, it works! I had to reboot to get it to stick though -- don't know any other way to restart Explorer. How do I put a check mark on this thread? You guys deserve to be recognized for the work you did.

This is really a neat trick. I'm shocked MSFT did not included this as an option in the taskbar properties panel. I'm willing to bet most people would prefer this (single click taking you to the last window you were in) to be the default behavior.

To restart Explorer without rebooting, open the task manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del) and end the Explorer.exe process. Then create a new task and type "explorer.exe".

MrJukes · Nov 18, 2009

How to cleanly shutdown explorer
This is how I do it except you can just ctrl+shift+right click on any blank spot in the start menu (doesn't have to be on/near the shutdown button).

Mark · Nov 21, 2009

There is one other way, Ctrl+Shift+Esc and that will bring up the Task manager in one go, then just kill the explorer process and then select new task and start it again.

CoolioG · Mar 19, 2010

FYI, this was fetured on Lifehacker

LINK

Changing window selection behavior in the taskbar

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