You Can Now Pin Important Apps to the Screen in Windows

If you’ve ever wished you had Microsoft Word pinned to your screen while you take notes from a Zoom lecture or YouTube video, you’re in luck. Thanks to Microsoft PowerToys for Windows, specifically the Always On Top utility, you can now pin your most important windows to stay fixed (temporarily) on top of all others.

PowerToys is a group of tools that add useful features to Windows, and Always On Top is the latest utility added to this set. To install it, go to the GitHub page for PowerToys and download the setup file.

After installing PowerToys, click Always On Top in the left pane and check if the Enable Always On Top option in the right pane is enabled. The default keyboard shortcut for pinning any window to the screen is Windows Key + Control + T . (You can change this if you like in the Always On Top section of the PowerToys app. Just keep in mind that your custom keyboard shortcut must start with Shift, Control, Alt, or the Windows key.)

To pin any app to the screen, make sure it’s the active window and then use the keyboard shortcut. You will see a blue border around the window and hear a beep to indicate that the app is now pinned to the display. It will stay there until you unpin it. To unpin the app from the screen, use the same keyboard shortcut (Windows + Control + T) again.

You get some additional customization options for Always On Top through the PowerToys app that’s worth checking out. You can change the color or thickness of the border around a docked window, or remove it entirely. PowerToys also allows you to disable the sound of notifications when this feature is activated.

There’s also an Excluded Apps section that lets you decide which apps should never be pinned to the screen. Unfortunately, you can’t select these apps from the list – you’ll have to enter the app’s process name. For example, if you want to exclude Firefox, you need to enter firefox.exe .

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