Recently, we reviewed secret hidden options which allow you to tweak the transparency of the Alt+Tab dialog in Windows 10. In this article, we will see how to make the Alt+Tab dialog hide open windows while cycling through them in the Alt+Tab user interface. Here is how it can be done.
Advertisеment
In Windows 10, it is possible to make the Alt+Tab dialog not show background windows when you are switching between them. When enabled, this feature makes Alt+Tab show on an empty Desktop with icons and not a single background window open to distract you. This can be done with a simple Registry tweak.
- Open Registry Editor.
- Go to the following Registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
Tip: See how to jump to the desired Registry key with one click.
- Create a new subkey here named MultitaskingView.
- Under the MultitaskingView subkey, create a new subkey named AltTabViewHost.
- Under the AltTabViewHost subkey, create a new 32-bit DWORD value and name it wallpaper. Note: Even if you are running 64-bit Windows, you still need to create a 32-bit DWORD value.
Set its value data to 1.
1 - hide background windows.
0 or delete the Wallpaper value - means the default behavior with windows visible on the Desktop.
In the following example, I set it to 1:
This is the default appearance and behavior of the Alt+Tab dialog:
And this is how it looks when the value data of "Wallpaper" is set to 1:
Use Winaero Tweaker
If you would like to avoid Registry editing, you can use Winaero Tweaker. It will allow adjusting all the mentioned settings using a user friendly interface.
Watch the following video to see this tweak in action:
Tip: you can subscribe to our YouTube channel.
That's it.
Support us
Winaero greatly relies on your support. You can help the site keep bringing you interesting and useful content and software by using these options:
If you like this article, please share it using the buttons below. It won't take a lot from you, but it will help us grow. Thanks for your support!
Advertisеment
Hi,
thanks for the informative article. I notice in the pictures that you are probably using the “Print Screen” function to take pictures of the whole desktop, and then crop them manually to the window in front.
Just to let you know, you can avoid the tedious step of cropping by pressing “Prt Sc” + “Alt”, which will grab only the portion of the screen occupied by your selected window. This makes for much nicer pictures, and judging from the focus of your site you could also write an article on it.
Regards,
an.
Hi Winaero,
Could you please tell me how to adjust start menu transparency?
Thank you very much!
To be honest, I have no idea.
It is not tunable as I know unless you are using a third party start menu like Classic Shell.
http://classicshell.net
If you use Classic Shell, see this: http://www.classicshell.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1178
Hello,
I want to ask please if there any way to hide the program icon and its name when alt+tab on Windows 10.
see the screenshot please:
https://i.imgur.com/BjxOg0e.png
any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance and Best Regards.
AFAIK, Windows 10 doesn’t support this. However, you can go with something like VistaSwitcher.
Сергей, добрый день!
Прогуглил вдоль и поперёк но нигде не нашёл решения. Есть ли в Win10 способ скрывать все открытые окна кроме выбранного, во время навигации при использовании ALT+TAB (на манер превьюшек открытых приложений на таскбаре)? Так же подобное поведение было в Win7. Ваше решение хорошее но оно скрывает все без исключения открытые окна, оставляя только рабочий стол.
Is there a way to hide all opened windows/apps except chosen window/app while using ALT+TAB?
Увы, такого решения для Windows 10 не существует. Во всяком случае, штатными средствами.