How to Make Your Taskbar Buttons Always Switch to the Last Active Window

Given that Home windows 7, applications with a number of open home windows are blended into a one taskbar button. Hovering about the button presents you a are living thumbnail of every single window and you can then click the window you want to operate with.

If you are routinely switching between applications with open up windows, that can get a minor cumbersome. You can keep the Ctrl critical down when clicking a taskbar button to see the last energetic window—and then preserve clicking with Ctrl held to cycle by every single of that app’s open home windows — but that usually just lets you watch the window instead of creating it lively. If you’re eager to make a moderate Registry edit, you make it so that clicking a taskbar button often opens the final active window — no Ctrl critical required.

Note: This does not operate on Home windows 11 as of Could 2022. Even so, it does even now operate on Home windows 10,

Make Taskbar Buttons Open up the Past Lively Window by Enhancing the Registry Manually

To make clicking taskbar buttons open up the very last active window, you just have to have to make an adjustment to one particular placing in the Home windows Registry. This will work on PCs jogging Windows 7, 8, or 10.

Warning: Registry Editor is a powerful instrument and misusing it can render your technique unstable or even inoperable. This is a rather straightforward hack and as long as you adhere to the guidelines, you shouldn’t have any challenges. That stated, if you have never ever worked with it before, think about examining about how to use the Registry Editor prior to you get begun. And definitely back up the Registry (and your computer system!) right before producing variations.

Related: Understanding to Use the Registry Editor Like a Professional

Open up the Registry Editor by hitting Get started and typing “regedit”. Push Enter to open up Registry Editor and give it permission to make adjustments to your Computer.

In the Registry Editor, use the still left sidebar to navigate to the following key:

HKEY_Present_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerAdvanced

Upcoming you’re likely to create a new benefit inside the State-of-the-art vital. Correct-click the Superior important and opt for New > DWORD (32-little bit) Benefit.

Name the new price “LastActiveClick”.

Double-simply click the new LastActiveClick worth to open its houses window. Improve the benefit from to 1 in the “Value data” box and then simply click “OK.”

You can now exit Registry Editor. You will need to have to indication out and back again in (or restart your Computer system) for the improvements to just take location. You can test it by just popping open up any app and opening many windows. Make a window from a diverse app lively and then click on the authentic app’s taskbar button. It should open the very last window you labored on in that app. To reverse the improvements, just head back again into the Registry and either adjust the LastActiveClick value back to — or delete the value completely — and then sign out and back again into Home windows.

Obtain Our One-Click on Registry Hacks

If you never feel like diving into the Registry on your own, we’ve made some a pair of registry hacks you can use. The “Enable Last Active Click” hack produces the LastActiveClick worth and sets it to 1. The “Disable Previous Lively Click on (Default)” hack eliminates the worth from your Registry, restoring the default behavior. Each hacks are bundled in the pursuing ZIP file. Double-click on the one particular you want to use and simply click by way of the prompts. When you’ve applied the hack you want, indicator out and back again into Home windows or restart your personal computer.

Taskbar Final Lively Click Hacks

Relevant: How to Make Your Very own Windows Registry Hacks

These hacks are genuinely just the Advanced  key, stripped down to the LastActiveClick  value we talked about in the prior section, and then exported to a REG file. And if you get pleasure from fiddling with the Registry, it’s worthy of getting the time to master how to make your individual Registry hacks.