Windows 7: How To Disable Live Preview for Taskbar Thumbnails

Contributor Icon Contributed by shamanstears Date Icon October 25, 2009  
Tag Icon Tagged: Microsoft Windows 7

When you place your mouse cursor over the taskbar button of a running application, a small thumbnail of the application will appear. By placing your cursor over this thumbnail, you will see a live preview of the running application and all other applications that are running will become transparent. If you find this feature to be annoying, you can disable it by following these steps.

1. Click the Orb (Start Button).

2. Go to the Search programs and files textbox and input regedit.

3. Select regedit.exe from the results.

4. When the UAC prompt appears, click the Yes button.

5. In the left pane of the Registry Editor, go to (and select):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

6. Right-click in the right-pane.

7. Click New and select the appropriate DWORD for your system.

8. Name the new DWORD DisablePreviewWindow.

9. Double-click the new DWORD.

10. In the Value data textbox, input 1.

11. Click the OK button.

12. Restart your computer for the change to take affect.

Previous recipe | Next recipe |
 
  • GengK
    This does not work on Windows 7 Ultimate Edition.
  • Name
    Doesn't work with Home Premium either. The only way I have found to suppress those annoying thumbnails is to set MouseHoverTime to a large value in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse
  • john988
    I did this about a month ago and it worked for a week or two, but now it's displaying those annoying previews that just get in the way again. I went back into the registry and the new DWORD that I created is gone! What gives?
blog comments powered by Disqus