Windows 7 – Restore Old Alt-Tab Window Switching Behavior

alt-tabwindows 7

When you run more than six applications on Windows 7 and you press Alt + Tab, icons representing the first six applications and the desktop appear on the first row of the grid and you can cycle with Alt + Tab + Tab… through the six most-recently used windows the usual way, but the seventh and other less recently used windows don't follow the same rules.

Instead they get grouped together according to their application, but disregarding whether they were recently used or not. This new behavior is mentioned here.

I am very used to the old way of cycling and the new system is driving me crazy. I tend to have 20 or so windows open at one time and I frequently need to alt-tab to the seventh or eighth window on the stack, but it doesn't work the same any more.

How do I put back the old behavior, so that Alt + Tab + Tab + Tab … goes through the whole list in most-recent to least-recent order?

Best Answer

To restore the Windows XP Alt-Tab functionality simply launch regedit, add a DWORD named AltTabSettings to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer and set its value to 1.

And here's a one-line PowerShell script which does the above:

Set-ItemProperty HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer AltTabSettings ([int]1)
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