Quick Tip: Change Stacked Window behavior in the Windows 7 Taskbar

By Mark Kaelin

Takeaway: The Windows 7 Taskbar is great feature, but you may want to tweak one of its default behaviors with this registry edit.

The default Microsoft Windows 7 behavior when dealing with a set of single-app stacked windows in the Taskbar is to display the set as thumbnails when you hover or click the icon, similar to Figure A. But I find myself almost always wanting to return to the last active window, which means I have to find the right one via the thumbnails (Figure B).

Figure A

These are thumbnails of a set of single-app stacked windows in the Taskbar.

Figure B

Hover over each thumbnail to find the right one.

By tweaking the Windows Registry, you can change the stacked window behavior in the Taskbar to automatically open the last active window of that particular application.

Registry Edit

Warning: The Windows Registry is an integral part of the Windows 7 operating system. Editing and changing the registry file could render the system inoperable. Please make a backup of the registry file before you make any edits or tweaks.
Click the Start button and enter regedit in the search box and then click the regedit.exe menu item. Answer the UAC prompt to get to the edit screen (Figure C). Navigate to this key:
HKEY_CURRENT-USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

Figure C

Find the right key.

Right-click in a blank area in the right pane, click New, and then click the DWORD (32-bit) Value menu item, as shown in Figure D.

Figure D

Create a new DWORD.

Change the name to LastActiveClick, as shown in Figure E.

Figure E

Change the name to LastActiveClick.

Double-click on LastActiveClick to open the Value dialog box and change the Value Data field to 1 and click OK, as shown in Figure F.

Figure F

Change the Value Data field to 1.

Exit out of regedit and restart Windows. Now, when you click the icon representing stacked windows of a single application, you will automatically be sent to the last active window. If you click the stacked windows icon again, the next to last active window will be brought to the forefront and so on. No more thumbnails to choose from.