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

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-11-17T14:34:09+00:00

    @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.

    In the "sometimes works" video, the File Explorer flicker remained in the background (so it's doing something, but not commandeering the foreground). Also, the build number at the time of the video was 23H2 / 22631.2428 on November 3, shortly after 23H2 was released to seekers (as I understand it, "seekers" are folks who manually "check for updates" Clarifying the Confusion Surrounding Optional Updates for “Seekers” (batchpatch.com)).

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-11-17T14:15:53+00:00

    @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.

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-11-17T13:59:36+00:00

    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.

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-11-17T13:49:47+00:00

    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.

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-11-17T12:14:49+00:00

    Going by the Build numbering, it could be released to us all in December or latest January.

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