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
    2023-10-18T06:54:20+00:00

    thanks for this info ! Why does MS intend to fix this but still have a pop-up for 1 frame ? what is the point of interrupting our attention at all ... im not sure i know how long 1 frame is.... ?

    One frame depends on how your system is built. Your computer draws a picture on your screen in a short time, measured in FPS (frames per second).

    Any device that displays a picture from an electronic device has an update frequency measured in Hz (hertz), which limits how many frames can be shown. The Hz of a monitor varies from 30 Hz (or lower) to 300 Hz (or higher), which determines the max FPS for your computer.

    A 30 Hz monitor shows one frame for 33.3 ms (milliseconds, 1 second = 1000 milliseconds) and 300 FPS is 3.3 ms. A movie is usually in 24 FPS (41.7 ms). A game runs with at least 60 FPS (16.7 ms) on a decent setup, and a good setup has 240+ FPS (4.2 ms).

    So you could notice the explorer window displayed for one frame on a 30 Hz monitor, less on a 60 Hz monitor, and almost never on a 240 Hz monitor.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-10-17T15:19:09+00:00

    thanks for this info ! Why does MS intend to fix this but still have a pop-up for 1 frame ? what is the point of interrupting our attention at all ... im not sure i know how long 1 frame is.... ?

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-10-14T01:52:27+00:00

    Sometimes, when the explorer windows pops up -- and even though I know that it's not coincidental -- there are times when it just so happens to pop up - by chance - when I'm hitting back-space etc. And even though hitting backspace at the time might not be a problem, it always makes me wonder if I do lose something accidentally when the explore windows pops up while I'm in the middle of pressing keys on my keyboard (ie. while doing normal work).

    This is the reason why Microsoft absolutely needs to get onto this case. And fix it. Not in a few months time. But fix it now.

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-10-14T01:39:51+00:00

    i get this too, its super annoying. it doesnt just pop up over browsers either. i have had it pop up over games, like when im playing escape from tarkov. using the windows snipping tool has the opposite problem as this, when you screen snip something, instead of the snipping tool staying in the foreground, it is pushed away.

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