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About a month ago Windows Explorer started the annoying habit of routinely moving its most recently opened window into the foreground. Is there a way to stop it from doing this?
For example, I'll open an Explorer window to open a file into another application, and a few minutes later, for no apparent reason, Windows Explorer will interrupt the application by popping its Explorer window into the foreground. The same thing will happen when watching a video: a minute or two into watching the video and the most recently opened Explorer window will move into the foreground interrupting the video.
The only way to stop this behavior is to close all Explorer windows while watching a video or working in another application. Annoying as heck. Any suggestions? Thanks.
Microsoft Windows 11 Home Version 10.0.22621 Build 22621
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
@Jacob W. Klein thank you for the detail. Unfortunately, my hands are tied with regards to OS versions on my work machine, but I will consider it for home.
As you say, the 1 frame update would be a significant improvement.
I do recall a video from @Bill Moller (3rd Nov, bottom of page 44) showing that a fix that worked only sometimes. You can see the Explorer window flicker in the "working" video. It's not clear if that was from the 23H2 dev build.
Has anyone found out why it has to "show for 1 frame"? Seems very odd, as if they've got some piece of complexity in the wrong place and are trying to work around it instead of moving it.
Seems like something is updating periodically (some [many?] of us believe Group Policy related even for Home versions), which causes File Explorer to gain focus and pop-over anything/everything else on screen.
Has anyone found out why it has to "show for 1 frame"? Seems very odd, as if they've got some piece of complexity in the wrong place and are trying to work around it instead of moving it.
Release Preview is an Insider channel, for stuff that is very close to public release. It's very stable, and accessible in Settings > Windows Update > Windows Insider Program.
However, I'd recommend just a bit more patience. If something is in the Release Preview channel, it will be released to the public in either a Patch Tuesday (2nd Tuesday of the month), or a Preview Update (4th Tuesday of the month). You can find the Preview Updates in Windows Update > Advanced Options > Optional Updates, and it might require the option "Get the latest updates as soon as they're available", not sure.
All that being said, it sounds like:
11/28 might be the day that the Preview Update is available.
12/12 might be the day that the Release Update is available.
I'm expecting the behavior to change from "File Explorer steals focus" to "File Explorer shows for 1 frame but does not steal focus", which is what the Dev channel has had for a long time now. Not perfect, but much much better.
Feel free to hop into Release Preview channel right now, if you want. You generally pick up fixes a little bit earlier than the Release channel, while staying very stable.
Going by the Build numbering, it could be released to us all in December or latest January.
