Alt tab not minimising some games?

Mr Garkaz · May 12, 2020

I have a single monitor. I used to be able to alt tab out of a full screen game and it would minimize in the background until I opened it again. As of a couple of days ago about half the games I've tried that used to run full screen fine no longer minimize
when I alt tab and seem to be just open in the background so whenever I open the start menu or click on a window the game instantly reappears.

So far it's happening with Binding of Isaac, Golf with your Friends and Undermine via steam, and Gears Tactics and AOE remastered via the game pass app. Doesn't happen with Dark Souls 3, CSGO or Metro 2033 that I've tried so far - can alt tab out of those
and they stay minimized until I click on them again fine.

Also when you mouse over the taskbar for the games giving me issues, they still seem to be running in the Peek view? Whereas I mouse over DS3 while minimized and it's just black.

Hopefully someone knows what I'm talking about? All the google results are people with 2 monitors not wanting this to happen. I am aware windowed mode exists but it's extremely awkward for Gears for example and considering it wasn't doing this last week
I would love to get back to that point. Thanks.

AMD Ryzen 5 2600, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060, Windows 10

:)

Obsessive Power

I will try with some of my games later and let you know. This won't be until at last five hours time as I'm currently working from home.

Obsessive Power

Just to clarify - if you alt tab out of a full screen game to a window that's
not covering your entire wallpaper (i.e not maximised), is the game minimised? Or is the game still visually running in the background for you, blocking your view of the wallpaper?

Hi,

If I alt + tab from game that's running full screen then my game is minimised to the Taskbar. I must remind you that unless you have another application either running on the desktop or also minimised, alt + tab won't take you anywhere. If I hold the keys
down, my game shows in a small window in the middle of the screen. When I let go of the buttons it goes back to full screen.

On pretty much all of my games, if I press the Windows Key on my keyboard, it automatically displays the Start menu and my game is minimised completely.

While a game is minimised, it still uses system resources such as in RAM, CPU and GPU cycles.

There is nothing special about my PC configuration. Standard Windows Settings. I built the PC myself it's an i7 8700, 16GB and an RTX 2080 graphics card.

Frederik Long

I did try your suggestion but it seems like that combination doesn't do anything to a game running full screen. Can see how it works for chrome etc. but not for what I have a problem with. Unless I'm being very dumb and pressing the wrong keys.

Your game might be doing strange things. To find out, put a standard program such as your browser into full screen mode, then press Alt+space bar. You should get a selection menu. Now do the same thing in your game.

Mr Garkaz

Yep, all my browsers work fine displaying that menu with that shortcut, full screen or not. None of my games do that when they're running full screen though? They never have and I don't think they're meant to?

Do you know of any examples of games that do do that?

Mr Garkaz

Yeah, what you're saying with alt tab to take you out of the game to the browser you have open is what used to happen with all my games and still does happen with a few of them. It's not that that doesn't happen, it's that the game is still very much not
minimised in the background when it used to do that on an alt tab.

Just to clarify - if you alt tab out of a full screen game to a window that's
not covering your entire wallpaper (i.e not maximised), is the game minimised? Or is the game still visually running in the background for you, blocking your view of the wallpaper?

I have somewhat worked around it by launching all my games on a second virtual desktop, I just didn't know if there was a setting somewhere I've accidentally changed that caused it to start doing this.

Alt tab not minimising some games?