Windows 11--most recently opened Explorer window keeps popping up into the foreground

Anonymous
2023-01-01T17:15:47+00:00

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

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Files, folders, and storage

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.

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-01-17T17:45:55+00:00

    Here's a repro I found - if anyone can try this, please let me know if it also works for you:

    This appears to happen only once after explorer has first started. I can reliably repro this by restarting explorer from task manager (explorer -> end task, then "Run new task" -> "explorer.exe"), opening a new explorer window and moving it to the background, and then using ctrl+c to copy text in any application. That forces the previously opened explorer window to be brought to the foreground with focus.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-01-17T17:57:11+00:00

    Here's a repro I found - if anyone can try this, please let me know if it also works for you:

    This appears to happen only once after explorer has first started. I can reliably repro this by restarting explorer from task manager (explorer -> end task, then "Run new task" -> "explorer.exe"), opening a new explorer window and moving it to the background, and then using ctrl+c to copy text in any application. That forces the previously opened explorer window to be brought to the foreground with focus.

    I tried following these steps on Win11 22H2 22621.963 and was unable to reproduce.

    But the explorer window did pop into the foreground when i was watching a video on YouTube and got an email (an reply to this thread).

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-01-17T22:04:12+00:00

    Sadly it just happened again. This time both open Explorer windows came to the foreground. The last (finished) operation was copying files from a zip to a location. Five minutes ago. I was browsing the internet.

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-01-23T08:48:47+00:00

    Hi @neoTR0N, thanks for the update. I think it's safe to assume the clean build from ISO is not going to solve this for anyone else either.

    I have observed this issue on my work laptop, my home PC and a friend's laptop, all running Windows 11 22H2. The repro steps seem to be:

    1. Open Windows Explorer
    2. Open some other app (anything - could be a browser)
    3. ... do stuff in the other app for a period of time...

    Expected: The Explorer window remains in the background until the user brings it into the foreground.

    Actual: The Explorer window brings itself, or is otherwise brought, into the foreground at some random point.

    Back to you, Microsoft.

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-01-23T13:27:48+00:00

    Same, observing the same on both my private and work laptop, one being a ThinkPad E495, the other being an XPS 15, both running 22H2. Didn't observe the issue before December last year, then it appeared on both after one of the Win updates.

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