Mouse Hover Makes Window Active - Enable

How to Activate a Window by Hovering Over it with the Mouse Pointer​

   Information

This will allow you to Activate a window by hovering over it with the mouse pointer for a second to make it easier to switch between open windows.

hello all.
I've been reading this great forum passively for a short while now, its quite the wonderful resource.
what i could not find, though, was information on how to focus on windows by simply hovering over them with the mouse.

Back in XP, you could enable this with Tweak UI, which called it X-mouse.
It was great, i didn't have to click on a window to work in it.
but how to enable this in 7?



OPTION #1
As this article points out, you can switch windows by hovering if you enable it through:
Control Panel> Ease of Access> Change How Your Mouse Works
scroll down, check box "Activate a window by hovering over it with the mouse"
this method raises windows to the front when you hover over them.

OPTION #2
For a true X-mouse experience, you could use this third party software TXMouse:
True X-Mouse Gizmo for Windows
if you are familiar with Linux x-mouse behaviour, you might appreciate its other functions.




OPTION #3
If you don't need those extra functions, you can make a couple swift changes in the registry and achieve the same effect:
[Thanks to original commenter unpaidbill for this particular option]
Step #1:
Open regedit, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Edit UserPreferenceMask value to be 9F 3E 07 80 12 00 00 00
[You should only have to modify the first pair]
NOTE: Default value is 98 12 07 80 12 00 00 00.

Step #2:
Also in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Edit ActiveWndTrkTimeout, change 'Base' to Decimal and put in 150 as the 'Value Data'
NOTE: Default value is 500.

[this value is time in milliseconds that it takes for the focus to change.
to avoid some issues with the taskbar I recommended using a value like 150 or so,
but if you'd like to have a different delay before the window loses focus, set it to whatever you like.]

Step #3:
Log off and log back in

   Information

(Added by John Galt)

Here is the registry key to do that if you don't want to edit the registry yourself. View attachment Hover window select.reg

Here is the registry key to restore the default values. View attachment Default Windows hover.reg

This results in windows being active (but not being raised) when you hover over them.

Related Tutorials

---

• How to Open Items with a Single-Click or Double-Click in Windows 7
• How to Enable or Disable Point to Select using Single-click to Open an Item
• How to Select Items with Check Boxes in Windows 7

 

[Imposter]

Not quite

Thanks for the help, Dixon, but it's not right yet.
I ran XMouseSetting, unchecking Auto Raise (and logged off and back in), but the behavior is the same. Here is a simple example: I have open an Excel window and an Explorer window, slightly overlapping. If I hover the mouse over either, I can scroll with the mouse wheel or type, and the input is received correctly in whichever window has the mouse over it. But while clicking in the Explorer window always brings it to the front, clicking in the Excel window never does. I found the only way to bring it to the front is to click its title bar. (This actually always happens with Excel. Its window never comes to the front when I click inside it.) What I need is a setting that allows that click to override any other stacking or ordering being done, so that a clicked window always comes to the front.
I didn't run WizMouse, as it seems irrelevant to my issue. Thanks for your continued help.

-Imp

 

[Dixon Butz]

I have no solution. I run into the same issues sometimes even with explorer windows.
Somtimes I have to click the title bar.

 

[Imposter]

I FOUND A SOLUTION!

I can bring the window to the front if I click in it BEFORE the mouse hover activates. Example: If I have notepad and Excel open, overlapping, I can hover over either and scroll within it. If I click in notepad, it moves to the front, but clicking in Excel never does. However, if I move the mouse over Excel and click in it before the mouse hover activates it, it will come to the front. So the hover delay continues to be an important setting.

Thanks, everyone, for this discussion. Windows 7 continues to impress me with its useful features.

 

[Dixon Butz]

Oh I see. Nice find! What is you hover delay set at? I have mine set at 50ms I think.

 

[Imposter]

250 ms. Allows enough time to get to the systray icons, but not too long a wait when I'm actively scrolling between several windows. And so far, it's enough time for me to click in the Excel window when I want to bring it to the front. if I miss, I just head to the title bar or hover back to another window first.

 

[spotmom]

The issue I'm having is that when in Explorer, I can't use the scroll wheel when moving from the folder pane to the file pane without FIRST clicking somewhere in the file pane. Years ago I had a mouse driver that allows that and haven't seen that functionality for quite a while now. If anyone knows how to get the scroll wheel to work by placing the cursor within the pane (without having to click inside of that pane), please share how it's done. I miss that functionality!

FYI, the functionality I'm looking for in Explorer does work in Thunderbird. Clicking on a folder, I can hover over the emails list pane and begin scrolling that window with the wheel without having to click somewhere within it first.

Any answers?? This is my problem, too. I hate having to click every time I switch back and forth in the explorer window, one obvious reason is it changes what is in the right window depending on what you click to get the focus into the left window for scrolling, unless you painstakingly choose your spot (time waster!). This wasn't a problem in XP, why did MS change this functionality??

It still works in Outlook, but not explorer. Will the wonders never cease?

 

[jdub45]

Background:
About 6 months ago I moved from my long (and generally happy) relationship with XP to Win7 (so that I could run on newer hardware!) I customize my machine quite a lot, and hover mouse (Xmouse) is a top priority. It allows me to type in a "lower" window while reading from a "higher" window and even copy&paste from "higher" to "lower"... besides, I grew up in unix (before linux even), so when my company pushed me to XP, it was Tweak UI that made the transition tolerable. (That plus 'gvim'!=)

The .reg files I have picked up here are great, and by the time I began customizing Win7, even the confusion about 'ActiveWndTrkTimeout' had settled out, however I have recently begun to notice a minor annoyance and am hoping for some direction here on SevenForums. Perhaps something has changed on my PC (a system update?) or perhaps I just didn't notice it all that time???

I have become quite comfortable with Win7 now, and I generally prefer it to XP at last. I hate to try anything too "radical" that will mess with my existing, significant range of customizations and its current stability, but this recent annoyance (see below) has me looking around for answers now.
My subtle question:
My subtle annoyance is with the hover behavior for Internet Explorer. To get an IE window (either "lower" or even the one "on top"), to be active, say for scrolling, I have to hover over the "frame" of the window first, not just anywhere in the IE window's interior. And since my focus for hovering is virtually always in the "content" area, not the toolbar, this is an annoying inefficiency...

I have seen some comments in this thread regarding the timeout setting. I went with 150ms, and with this one exception of IE, everything is dandy, but now that this behavior has become annoying, I am wondering if changing the timeout length would help. Frankly, I doubt it since I can hover in the "interior" of IE indefinitely and get no activation until I move the mouse over the toolbar or the outer frame of the window.

Any help/suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

 

[Brink]

Hello jdub, and welcome to Seven Forums.

As far as I know, this only works on the IE title bar, and not the interior of IE unlike you can with other windows, and cannot be changed.

 

[GBT7]

is there a way to add a delay to optipon 1?

Does anyone know of some registry key or anything that can make it so that there is a delay before the focus is swapped? maybe about 1 to 2 seconds? Because I only stumbled across this article trying to find how to do that...

 

[Brink]

Hello GBT7,

Step 2 in OPTION #3 is the timing setting for this.

 

[fellowsdevel]

Very thanx!!

The option #3 was by far the best one!!! Thanxxxxx

 

[pxfragonard]

Thanks. That solved two problems for me at once. First, that clicking (in Lightroom the mouse behaves properly, why not in Windows?) and the resizing of the window to fit the whole screen. Great tutorial. Didn't read past the first option though. Why import stuff if it's already tested with the set sold to me?
​

 

[stile777]

Can you tell me how to change the mouse pointers in that top box? I have a program that checks the mouse hoover check box and when I uncheck it the apply button changes my mouse pointer to one of the 9 pointers available. Well I want to change one of those to my mouse pointer. Is there a way to do this?

 

[Brink]

Hello Stile, and welcome to Seven Forums.

You should be able to change your mouse pointer to what you like using an option in the tutorial below without affecting the hover to activate setting.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2402-mouse-pointers-change.html

 

[RoyalBatsebus]

Option #3 was perfect for me except for one annoying side effect affecting Aero Snap. I frequently use Aero Snap to move windows around using windows key+side arrows combination. Moving a window away from the pointer causes this onhover feature to give focus to the window lying underneath the one I'm moving so that I will begin moving this window instead.

How can I fix this problem? Is there a way to make the mouse follow the moving window? Or is there a way to make option #3 activate only when the mouse is manually moved into another window?

 

[ITMan73]

Opt. 3 Regs - Perfect!!!

TX a bunch gabeforprez & John Galt.

 

[bwhurd]

Create shortcut to option #1 (activate window on mouse hover)

This thread helped me, and then I wanted to make this quick and easy to do, so I thought I'd share-- If you want to create a shortcut to option #1 to activate window on hover in ease of access settings, here's how--
1. right click in any folder in windows explorer folder → New → Shortcut
2. paste the following into the "Type a name for the shortcut" dialogue:

explorer shell:::{D555645E-D4F8-4c29-A827-D93C859C4F2A} -Microsoft.EaseOfAccessCenter\pageEasierToClick

3. Click next, and then name the shortcut whatever you want such as "Make mouse easier to use"
4. Here's a link to an icon to use for the shortcut if you are that kind of weirdo like myself

Shortcut codes from step #2 can be found at this link (Complete List of Windows 10 CLSID Key (GUID) Shortcuts).