Accessibility Change Time to Activate Window by Hovering Over with Mouse Pointer in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to change the timeout to activate a window by hovering over it with the mouse pointer for your account in Windows 10 and Windows 11.

By default in Windows, you need to click/tap on a window to make it active and bring it into focus.

If you turn on Activate a window by hovering over it with the mouse pointer, you can activate a window by hovering over it with the mouse pointer for a half second (500 ms) by default.

If you like, you can change the timeout delay to what you want for how long you need to hover over a window before it activates.

Reference:


Here's How:

1 Open Registry Editor (regedit.exe).

2 Navigate to the key below in the left pane of Registry Editor. (see screenshot below)



3 In the right pane of the Desktop key, double click/tap on the ActiveWndTrkTimeout DWORD to modify it. (see screenshot above)

If you do not see the ActiveWndTrkTimeout DWORD, then verify you have turned on Activate a window by hovering over it with the mouse, refresh (F5) Registry Editor, and check again.

4 Select (dot) Decimal, type in a number for how many milliseconds (ms) for the timeout you want, and click/tap on OK. (see screenshot below)

The default time is 500 ms. 1000 ms equals 1 second.

5 Close Registry Editor.

6 Either sign out and sign in or restart the computer to apply.


That's it,
Shawn Brink