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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.
Hi,
This bug is more than 1 year old.
It will never be fixed anymore.
Consider this as a new Windows feature.
The purpose of this feature is:
If you have a Windows Explorer window open, it is because you need to do something in that folder, so it pops up to the foreground to remind you.
It's the AI 😂
To my knowledge, the problem happens only when the user leaves a File Explorer window open. So, I'd wager that it is possible that most people would not have a problem with this bug. But it's surely a bug, and I do hope we see the fix soon.
The workaround is to make sure File Explorer is closed, when doing important work/gaming.
Or you can pick up the proposed fix as an Insider in the Dev Channel, where "stealing focus" is fixed, but you still see 1 frame of File Explorer when the issue gets triggered.
Indeed, the workaround is to make sure File Explorer is closed when doing important work, but that's impracticable, akin to managing a leaky faucet by turning off the water main to a house. Besides, my work involves having multiple File Explorer windows opened all the time.
To be fair, Windows 11 isn't completely broken. Windows Explorer does successfully allow you to navigate folders, choose files, etc. And you can run successfully run applications for work and play. It's just... when you try to do both at the same time... you trigger this unnecessary, silly, and incredibly irritating bug; which is very disappointing in a product named Windows that, somehow, doesn't seem able to handle windows as well as it used to!
Thanks for continuing to push for proper recognition and fix!
Yes, Windows is not completely broken, and "broken" appears to be the word that set off the acrimony on r/microsoft; maybe that's a trigger word for tech support people and/or coders?
As an IT person - I openly admit "Broken" IS a trigger word. I hate thinking that something I've built doesn't work correctly. It triggers me to Do My Job and fix the problem. And then, I Thank the person who pointed it out. Coding is a big messy world, things will break - people who report the errors are Helping you out! There's ZERO excuse for this bug being left uncorrected for so long. There are millions of people whose workflows involve having a window open in the background. It's not even a topic worth debating. Someone at MS is being lazy and/or living in denial about their own work/skills/abilities. Just get over it and fix it. Do your job.
As an IT person - I openly admit "Broken" IS a trigger word. I hate thinking that something I've built doesn't work correctly. It triggers me to Do My Job and fix the problem. And then, I Thank the person who pointed it out. Coding is a big messy world, things will break - people who report the errors are Helping you out! There's ZERO excuse for this bug being left uncorrected for so long. There are millions of people whose workflows involve having a window open in the background. It's not even a topic worth debating. Someone at MS is being lazy and/or living in denial about their own work/skills/abilities. Just get over it and fix it. Do your job.
Thank you.
I would also reject the suggestion that a viable workaround is to ensure File Explorer is closed... if you were to navigate to a folder using File Explorer and open a Word document in that folder by double-clicking it, File Explorer would remain open and the Word document would now be in the foreground.
It would be a pain to then manually close File Explorer to avoid this bug.
