How to pin a window in windows 10

When you are working in Windows with limited screen space, it’s useful to have certain windows stay on top of others. Some programs in Windows automatically incorporate this “always on top” feature, but most programs don’t, and Windows doesn’t include this feature either.

Today we’ll cover three ways to easily add the “always on top” feature to every single program in Windows.

1. Use a Keyboard Shortcut with an Always on Top AutoHotkey Script

AutoHotkey is a free program that allows you to create scripts to perform multiple actions with a single keyboard shortcut. It runs in the background and sits in the system tray.

We’re going to use AutoHotkey to create a script that will keep a selected window on top of all others when you press Ctrl + Spacebar when that window is active. We’ll show you the script and explain how it works. But we’ll also provide a downloadable AutoHotkey script file you can use.

Download and install AutoHotkey and then run it.

Download the AlwaysOnTop.ahk script file, extract the .zip file, and put the script in a folder on your hard drive that won’t be moved or deleted.

The script contains some comments and then the following command:

^SPACE::  Winset, Alwaysontop, , A

This command sets the currently active window to always be on top when you press Ctrl + Spacebar. If you’d rather use a different key combination, you can change the first part of the command, “^SPACE“. The “^” character represents the Ctrl key. You’ll find the symbols to use for other hotkeys in the Hotkey Modifier Symbols section on this AutoHotkey help page.

You can put the script in the Windows startup folder (%AppData%MicrosoftWindowsStart MenuProgramsStartup), so it starts automatically when Windows starts.

The AutoHotkey script stays in the system tray.

To make the active window always on top, press Ctrl + Spacebar (or the keyboard shortcut you assigned). Press the keyboard shortcut again to disable “always on top” for the active window.

For script options, right-click on the AutoHotkey icon in the system tray.

2. Use Your Mouse with DeskPins

DeskPins provides pins you can grab and use to keep any window on top of all other windows. The program sits in the system tray and uses minimal resources.

Download and install DeskPins. Run the program, right-click the icon in the system tray, and select Options to change the Pins, Autopin, and Hotkeys settings.

On the Pins tab, you can change the color of the pins. The Tracking rate controls how often each pin checks the pinned window’s position and state. Lower values make the pins more responsive. You can enter any number from 10 to 1000 msec (milliseconds).

If you have an older computer, you may want to increase the Tracking rate number to avoid slowing down your computer.

You can also choose Single click or Double click under Tray Icon Activation to indicate how you get pins from the DeskPins system tray icon. The default is Single click.

You can have DeskPins automatically pin certain types of windows using rules on the Autopin tab.

Check the Enable box and then click Add to add a new rule. Use the checkboxes next to the rules to enable and disable individual rules.

Click Help to access the DeskPins help file for more information about automatically pinning windows.

DeskPins provides default shortcuts for entering pin mode and toggling the active window pin. You can change these shortcuts on the Hotkeys tab.

To pin a window on top, click (or double-click, depending on the setting) the DeskPins icon in the system tray.

Then, click the title bar on the window you want to keep always on top.

A pin displays on the title bar of the chosen window in the color you specified, or in the default color red.

Click the pin again to disable always on top for the window.

3. Use a System Tray Menu with TurboTop

TurboTop also sits in your system tray like DeskPins. But it operates differently.

Download and install TurboTop. Then, run the program.

To keep a window always on top, click the TurboTop icon in the system tray. A list of all open windows displays. Select the title of the window you want.

Any windows you choose to be always on top are indicated with a checkmark on the TurboTop menu.

To stop keeping a window always on top, click the TurboTop icon in the system tray and select that window again, so there’s no checkmark next to the window name on the menu.

Bring the Always-on-Top Feature to All Windows

Whether you like using keyboard shortcuts or prefer using the mouse, there’s an easy solution for keeping windows always on top. If you’ve found other options for keeping windows always on top, let us know in the comments.

To pin a window on top, click (or double-click, depending on the setting) the DeskPins icon in the system tray.

Then, click the title bar on the window you want to keep always on top.

How do I keep a window always on top?

All you need to do is select the window and then hit ‘Ctrl + Space’ from your keyboard, and the window will stay there as it is on top of all other windows. Click here to download Always On Top.

How do I lock a window in Windows 10?

4 ways to lock your Windows 10 PC

• Windows-L. Hit the Windows key and the L key on your keyboard. Keyboard shortcut for the lock!
• Ctrl-Alt-Del. Press Ctrl-Alt-Delete.
• Start button. Tap or click the Start button in the bottom-left corner.
• Auto lock via screen saver. You can set your PC to lock automatically when the screen saver pops up.

Is there a way to pin a window on top?

Click the icon in your taskbar and look for your mouse to turn int a small pin. Instead of using a keyboard shortcut, you’ll need to pin your program by clicking on the top portion of a desktop window. A small red pin icon will appear in the pinned window at the top of the page.

How do you make an app always on top?

Select the Player tab and enable the “Keep Now Playing on top of other windows” checkbox. Firefox: Install the Always on Top add-on. Once you have, press Alt and click View > Always on Top. You can also just press Ctrl+Alt+T to make the current Firefox window always-on-top.

How do I make Windows 10 full screen?

Use a keyboard shortcut to switch between full screen and normal display modes. When screen space is at a premium and you only need SecureCRT on your screen, press ALT+ENTER (Windows) or COMMAND+ENTER (Mac). The application will expand to full screen, hiding the menu bar, tool bar, and title bar.

How do I lock apps on Windows 10?

Lock Apps on Windows 10 with My Lockbox

1. You can use the My Lockbox software to lock apps on Windows 10.
2. When you first open My Lockbox, the software will ask you to set up a password that will be used to lock the apps on your PC.
3. Then, you can choose the folder to protect and click “Ok”.

What does lock do on Windows 10?

Locking and Unlocking Your Windows 10 Computer. You unlock your computer by logging in again (with your NetID and password). Locking Your Computer. Press and hold the Windows logo key on your keyboard (this key should appear next to the Alt key), and then press the L key.

How do I remotely lock my computer Windows 10?

How to lock a Windows 10 device remotely

• Open your Microsoft account online.
• Click on Devices.
• In the “Overview” tab, click the Show details (or Manage) button for the device you want to lock.
• Click the Find my device tab.
• Click the Lock button on the top-right side.
• Click the Next button.

Where are Windows 10 lock screen pictures?

How to Find Windows 10’s Spotlight Lock Screen Pictures

1. Click Options.
2. Click the View tab.
3. Select “Show hidden files, folders and drives” and click Apply.
4. Go to This PC > Local Disk (C:) > Users > [YOUR USERNAME] > AppData > Local > Packages > Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy > LocalState > Assets.

How do I pin a window to my screen?

To pin a window to the side of the screen, you simply drag it by its title bar until the mouse cursor hits the left or right boundary of the screen. Before you let go of the mouse button, you will see a ghost of how the window will be placed. Let go of the mouse button and the window will drop there.

How do I make my apps full screen on Windows 10?

Click on Start Button on your Taskbar and open any of the Universal App. Press the middle maximize button and the app will expand to fill up the screen. Now press Win+Shift+Enter keys and the app will go full-screen as follows.

How do I turn off Internet Explorer always on top?

If you’d like to disable it, here’s how.

• Right click the Start icon and select Control Panel.
• Click Programs.
• Choose Programs & Features.
• In the left sidebar, select Turn Windows features on or off.
• Uncheck the box next to Internet Explorer 11.
• Select Yes from the pop-up dialogue.
• Press OK.

How do I keep notepad on top?

Open Notepad, click on the “DeskPins” icon on the Taskbar and then click anywhere within the Notepad window to keep it on top. Go to Dropbox.com and download the Always On Top ZIP file. Run the executable file inside the Always On Top ZIP file. Open Notepad and press “Ctrl-Space” to keep the Notepad window on top.

How do I make Netflix always on top?

Method

1. Go to the Chrome Webstore.
2. Install this add-on: Open-as-Popup.
3. Navigate to the Netflix site.
4. Pick the movie of choice and start watching.
5. Find the Open-as-Popup icon in the toolbar and click it.
6. With the new Popup window selected, Use the Always On-Top hotkey Ctrl+Space to set the that window as “Always On-Top”.

How do you make Excel always on top?

Instead, think of the selection as the first cell outside of your fixed column and row.

• Open your Excel spreadsheet.
• Click cell B2.
• Click the View tab on the ribbon.
• Double-click the Freeze Panes button.
• Click the option Freeze Panes.
• Scroll down your worksheet to make sure the first row stays at the top.

How do I maximize my screen on Windows 10?

Full Screen issues on Windows 10?

1. Go to the Options / Menu / Settings inside the game (not all games have this). Select Full-Screen On (or Off).
2. Check the Resolution and DPI settings on the computer. In Windows 10 that screen will look allot like this:
3. Game won’t open in fullscreen. You may have success when you reduced color mode.
4. Game is flashing.

How do I fix full screen on Windows 10?

To do that, follow these steps:

• Right click on your Desktop and choose Display settings from the menu.
• In Display settings window click Identify.
• Now in Display settings set the monitor with the same number you got in Step 2 as the main monitor.
• Save the changes and try running games in fullscreen.

How do I make my command prompt full screen Windows 10?

To try the full screen mode of the command prompt in Windows 10, do the following:

1. Open a new Command prompt window by launching the appropriate shortcut from the Start menu or by typing cmd into the Start menu search box and pressing Enter.
2. When command prompt starts, press Alt + Enter keys together on the keyboard.

How do I hide a window in Windows 10?

Hide or Display All Desktop Items in Windows 10. The first way to quickly hide everything is a built-in feature of Windows 10. Just right-click an empty area of the desktop and select View and then uncheck Show desktop icons from the context menu.

How do I hide apps on Windows 10?

Hide App list from Windows 10 Start Menu

• Step 1: Go to ‘Start’, and open ‘Settings’.
• Step 2: Now select ‘Personalization’. Then from the left menu choose ‘Start’.
• Step 3: Find the setting that says “Show app list in Start menu” and turn it off to hide the app list from the Start menu.

Can you password protect a folder in Windows 10?

Unfortunately, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10 do not provide any features for password protecting files or folders. You need to use a third-party software program to accomplish this. Select the file or folder you want to encrypt. Right-click the file or folder and select Properties.

How do I change the login screen on Windows 10?

To change the current login screen background image, open the Settings app. Go to the Personalization group of settings and click ‘Lock Screen’. Select an image for the lock screen and then scroll down to the very bottom. Here you will see an option ‘Show lock screen background picture on the sign-in screen’.

What is the lock screen on Windows 10?

You can do a lot of cool things in Windows 10, but the first item that greets you when you fire up the OS is the lock screen. Clicking or tapping on it brings you to the sign-in screen where you log in to Windows.

How do I fix the lock screen on Windows 10?

Now expand “Desktop background settings -> Slide show” and set “On battery” option to “Available” from the drop down box. Apply changes and it may also fix the issue. If the option “Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to unlock” is enabled on your Windows 10 computer, the slide show feature of Lock Screen will not work.

How do I make Skype always on top?

Press “Ctrl-Space” to keep Skype on top. The Skype window will always appear in front of all other windows on the screen and on top of the Windows task bar. Press “Ctrl-Space” again when you want to undo this, so that the window behaves like a normal window again..

How do I minimize a window in Internet Explorer?

How to Minimize & Maximize an Internet Explorer Browser

1. Open your Internet Explorer web browser.
2. Click on the small box that is displayed with a horizontal line or a symbol that looks like a dash, located on the upper, right corner of the Internet Explorer window. The window should minimize as soon as you click.

To make your app window “Always on Top,” click on the “Window” option in the menu and select “Keep Afloat.” Do note that Afloat doesn’t work on all applications (for example, Firefox). It only works for applications with support for SIMBL, so don’t be surprised when you don’t see the “Keep Afloat” function.

Photo in the article by “Flickr” https://www.flickr.com/photos/dok1/4609436395/

Windows 10 provides you several ways to pin a website to the Start menu in Windows 10. It is a useful function which saves your time. If you are in Tablet mode, you can open your favorite web site with just one tap or click!

For some reason, Microsoft has locked down the ability to pin a website to the Start Menu by right clicking a URL file from your Favorites folder. But a number of third party browsers and the default browser, Microsoft Edge, have the appropriate function to pin your favorite web pages as Start menu tiles. Also, if you want to use the built-in ability to pin web sites to the Start menu, i.e. without using any browser, you can unblock the hidden context menu entry for *.URL files. Let’s see all these ways one by one.

Pin a Website to the Start Menu in Windows 10 with Edge Or Chrome

Microsoft Edge

The Edge browser comes with the built-in ability to pin an opened website to the Start menu in Windows 10. It is accessible directly from its menu. Here is what you should do.

1. Open the Edge browser. Its icon is pinned to the taskbar out of the box.
2. Navigate to the website you want to pin to the Start menu.
3. In Edge, click the three dots «…» menu button to open the browser’s menu.
4. There, click the item Pin this page to Start as shown below:
5. A confirmation box will appear. There, click «Yes» to pin the page to the Start menu. It will appear in the Start menu immediately.

See the following screenshot:

A tile pinned this way will always open in Microsoft Edge. This is because Edge creates a special «modern» shortcut which only Edge can handle and ignores the default browser which might be set in Settings by the user.

Google Chrome

Similar to Microsoft Edge, the popular Google Chrome browser allows you to create a shortcut to the opened page. However, the shortcut will be created on the Desktop instead of the Start menu, but you can pin it to the Start menu from the context menu without additional hacks or tweaks. Do the following.

1. Launch Chrome and navigate to the page of your choice.
2. Click the vertical three dots menu button to open Chrome’s menu:
   
3. Under «More tools», look for the command «Add to Desktop»:
   
4. Google Chrome will ask you for the shortcut name. You can change it if you wish.
5. A new URL shortcut will be created on your Desktop:
   
6. Now, just right click it and pin to the Start menu using the context menu item «Pin to Start»:
   

The site will be pinned to the Start menu:

When you click this tile, the pinned web site will be opened in Google Chrome. If you open the shortcut’s properties, you will see that it is set to launch Chrome’s executable file:

Firefox or any other browser

Actually, you can use the trick done by Google Chrome to pin a web site which will be opened in your browser of choice.

For example, to pin a web site which will always open in Mozilla Firefox, you can do the following:

1. Right click the Desktop and select New — Shortcut.
2. In the shortcut target box, type or copy-paste the full path to Firefox’s EXE file. In my case it is

   "C:Program Files (x86)Mozilla Firefoxfirefox.exe"

   

3. After the «firefox.exe» portion, add a space and type or paste the destination URL of the web site you want to open with the shortcut, so you will get something like this:

   "C:Program Files (x86)Mozilla Firefoxfirefox.exe" https://winaero.com

   

4. Name the shortcut as you wish.
5. Now, right click the shortcut you created and select «Pin to Start» from the context menu:
   

Voila, you just pinned a web site which will be opened in Firefox:

Now, let’s see how to pin URL files to the Start menu in Windows 10.

Pin URL files to the Start menu in Windows 10

This is possible and the great news is URL files are handled by the default browser installed. Once you pin a URL file, you can switch your default browser and it won’t be necessary to change your tiles in the Start menu.

The quickest way to create a URL file for an opened page is to drag the address bar icon to the Desktop. This works in Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer. I have not tested it with other browsers, but the same should be possible in other Chromium-based browsers like Opera.

Let’s create a new URL file.

1. Open the target web site in Firefox, Chrome or Internet Explorer. I will use Firefox.
2. Click the icon on the left from the web site address and drag and drop it to the Desktop. Tip: to drag to the Desktop, drag it first to the Show Desktop (Aero Peek) button at the end of the Taskbar. Or press Win+D after you have started dragging and drop it on the Desktop.

You just created a new URL file:

You can check out its properties. While you created it using Firefox, the target web site will be opened in the default browser every time you click it.

Now, in the context menu of the URL file there is no «Pin to Start» command.

Let’s enable it!

You need to enable the Pin to Start command for all file types. I covered this in detail in the following article:

How to pin any file to Start Menu in Windows 10

In short, you need to apply the following tweak:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareClasses*]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareClasses*shellex]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareClasses*shellexContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareClasses*shellexContextMenuHandlersPintoStartScreen]
@="{470C0EBD-5D73-4d58-9CED-E91E22E23282}"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareClassesAllFileSystemObjects]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareClassesAllFileSystemObjectsshellex]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareClassesAllFileSystemObjectsshellexContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareClassesAllFileSystemObjectsshellexContextMenuHandlersPintoStartScreen]
@="{470C0EBD-5D73-4d58-9CED-E91E22E23282}"

You can download ready-to-use «Pin To Start» registry tweak.

The Pin to Start command will become available for all files in Windows 10:

Now, right click the URL file you have and select Pin to Start. The command will be visible there:

When click the command, the URL file will be pinned to the Start menu in Windows 10:

When you click the pinned URL file in the Start menu, it will open in your default browser!

Also, if you install a new browser app, you will be prompted to choose the app to open your pinned URL file:

The last trick is the best one as it provides you a way to change the default browser and open pinned web sites to the Start menu in any browser you want.

That’s it.

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