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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.
There are multiple things that trigger this behavior. Happened as well when i got a windows notification for an email.
The background was the one i could reproduce reliably.
I didn't mean to discount your observation. Could well be that desktop background changes trigger the behavior. Also, I've noticed that if I'm copying a large number of files, Explorer will pop to the fore when the copying is complete.
For me, it seems random. I haven't been able to detect any particular activities or behaviors that seem to exclusively cause this issue, or be associated with this issue.
That's my experience too. Explorer will be in the background and pop to the foreground. I've noticed it most watching video files using VLC (where the file is launched via explorer) as it is most intrusive. This happens with no interaction with the machine.
My feeling is that it is being triggered 'under the hood' forcing it into the foreground when it's open.
Same here. Watching a video using VLC media player full screen, and if there is an Explorer window open it will eventually pop to the fore interrupting the video. Explorer doesn't stop the video, just suddenly appears in front of it.
As a person who is experiencing the same issue, here's a possible reason from what I have observed:
When my wallpaper changes, the latest file explorer window pops up.
In my case, I'm using the Steam Wallpaper Engine; but I'm not sure that it matters. I believe it's happening when the wallpaper changes (that switch).
Can anyone else validate that observation?
