3 Ways to Keep a Window Always on Top on Windows 10

When you are working in Windows with limited screen space, it’s useful to have certain windows stay on top of others. Some programs in Windows automatically incorporate this “always on top” feature, but most programs don’t, and Windows doesn’t include this feature either.

Today we’ll cover three ways to easily add the “always on top” feature to every single program in Windows.

1. Use a Keyboard Shortcut with an Always on Top AutoHotkey Script

AutoHotkey is a free program that allows you to create scripts to perform multiple actions with a single keyboard shortcut. It runs in the background and sits in the system tray.

We’re going to use AutoHotkey to create a script that will keep a selected window on top of all others when you press Ctrl + Spacebar when that window is active. We’ll show you the script and explain how it works. But we’ll also provide a downloadable AutoHotkey script file you can use.

Download and install AutoHotkey and then run it.

Download the AlwaysOnTop.ahk script file, extract the .zip file, and put the script in a folder on your hard drive that won’t be moved or deleted.

The script contains some comments and then the following command:

This command sets the currently active window to always be on top when you press Ctrl + Spacebar. If you’d rather use a different key combination, you can change the first part of the command, “^SPACE“. The “^” character represents the Ctrl key. You’ll find the symbols to use for other hotkeys in the Hotkey Modifier Symbols section on this AutoHotkey help page.

You can put the script in the Windows startup folder (%AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup), so it starts automatically when Windows starts.

The AutoHotkey script stays in the system tray.

To make the active window always on top, press Ctrl + Spacebar (or the keyboard shortcut you assigned). Press the keyboard shortcut again to disable “always on top” for the active window.

For script options, right-click on the AutoHotkey icon in the system tray.

2. Use Your Mouse with DeskPins

DeskPins provides pins you can grab and use to keep any window on top of all other windows. The program sits in the system tray and uses minimal resources.

Download and install DeskPins. Run the program, right-click the icon in the system tray, and select Options to change the Pins, Autopin, and Hotkeys settings.

On the Pins tab, you can change the color of the pins. The Tracking rate controls how often each pin checks the pinned window’s position and state. Lower values make the pins more responsive. You can enter any number from 10 to 1000 msec (milliseonds).

If you have an older computer, you may want to increase the Tracking rate number to avoid slowing down your computer.

You can also choose Single click or Double click under Tray Icon Activation to indicate how you get pins from the DeskPins system tray icon. The default is Single click.

You can have DeskPins automatically pin certain types of windows using rules on the Autopin tab.

Check the Enable box and then click Add to add a new rule. Use the check boxes next to the rules to enable and disable individual rules.

Click Help to access the DeskPins help file for more information about automatically pinning windows.

DeskPins provides default shortcuts for entering pin mode and toggling the active window pin. You can change these shortcuts on the Hotkeys tab.

To pin a window on top, click (or double-click, depending on the setting) the DeskPins icon in the system tray.

Then, click the title bar on the window you want to keep always on top.

A pin displays on the title bar of the chosen window in the color you specified, or in the default color red.

Click the pin again to disable always on top for the window.

3. Use a System Tray Menu with TurboTop

TurboTop also sits in your system tray like DeskPins. But it operates differently.

Download and install TurboTop. Then, run the program.

To keep a window always on top, click the TurboTop icon in the system tray. A list of all open windows displays. Select the title of the window you want.

Any windows you choose to be always on top are indicated with a check mark on the TurboTop menu.

To stop keeping a window always on top, click the TurboTop icon in the system tray and select that window again, so there’s no check mark next to the window name on the menu.

Bring the Always-on-Top Feature to All Windows

Whether you like using keyboard shortcuts or prefer using the mouse, there’s an easy solution for keeping windows always on top. If you’ve found other options for keeping windows always on top, let us know in the comments.

Disable «Always On Top» Windows 7 taskbar

I have read through all the posts, reported the bug during beta, found the hacks that don’t work properly, and still nothing that works.

Is there a status update on when this is going to be fixed? Loosing half an inch of desktop space is annoying when working on small screens. Or is that the point?

I need to be able to explain to over 250 people how to live with this bug and when a fix can be expected.

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I’d suggest you to give your Feedback about this feature from the link below to help you get more updates on this.

Yaaser — Microsoft Support Engineer
Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think

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There is no particular status update on when it is going to have “Keep taskbar on top of other windows” option. I’d suggest you to give your Feedback about this feature from the link below to help you get more updates on this.

Yaaser — Microsoft Support Engineer
Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think

One of the most annoying, glaring bugs, reported instantly upon release of the beta, is still not fixed? This makes win 7 extremely frustrating to attempt to use. Having the taskbar hide the title bar of running application windows is just plain stupid. Who ever let this get through the most rudimentary QA process without being reported and fixed needs to find a new job. It’s been reported hundreds of times. I reported it in beta, RC and in release. And am now told to report it again?

I will report the bug. again. again. since that seems to be the only solution you are suggesting. If any other microsoft rep knows the status of this usability bug, please let us know.

I visited link. The wonderful «submit suggestion» link. Where’s the report bug link? Where is the one that all the commercials talk about? You know, the one that Microsoft claims they actually read or listen to?
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Feedback left, but it won’t accept a real feedback submission. Submitting it here. Can you please submit this again for us?

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The task bar still stuck on top of all windows. Applications can no longer be maximized, taking up the entire screen. This makes using Windows 7 tedious because: it hides the title bar of application windows when you open them, requiring the use of hot keys, arrows, and key combinations to bring up «old» menus to right click to move windows to be able to grab the title bars of windows, you cannot maximize applications to use the full screen any longer, and it takes up precious desktop space on laptop screens. In short, it requires much more work to perform the same functions that we used to perform, and the work arounds are not intuitive on how to perform the functions that used to exist.

A typical user support conversation:

Customer: «How do you maximize the app to use the entire screen?»
Tech: «You can’t, they removed that ability.»
Customer: «How do I move a window with the title bar stuck under the task bar?»
Tech: «Hold down Shift key and right click on the icon in the task bar to bring up the old menu that used to appear when you right clicked and select ‘Move’. Then, use the arrow keys to move the window around until you can grab the title bar with the mouse cursor to move it where you want to normally.»
Customer: «But this happens every time I open an application?»
Tech: «Yes»
Customer: «WTF?»
Tech: «Correct, WTF. It’s a known bug that has been submitted thousands of times since public beta opened over a year ago.»
Customer: «Why are we considering upgrading to Win 7?»
Tech: «I have no clue.»

Having the task bar on top of the entire UI, ALL the time, is unacceptable. «AutoHide» is not a solution. You had a solution in Windows 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, NT4, 95, 98, ME, NT5, 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, and even 2008. You removed that solution with Win 7. And now thousands have complained, waiting for it to be fixed. How do we explain to our user base how the OS is plain broke, bringing into question why we are even considering upgrading to it? Why do we need to learn a new work around and try OS hacks to try to make it work?

How to make a window always stay on top in .Net?

I have a C# winforms app that runs a macro in another program. The other program will continually pop up windows and generally make things look, for lack of a better word, crazy. I want to implement a cancel button that will stop the process from running, but I cannot seem to get the window to stay on top. How do I do this in C#?

Edit: I have tried TopMost=true; , but the other program keeps popping up its own windows over top. Is there a way to send my window to the top every n milliseconds?

Edit: The way I solved this was by adding a system tray icon that will cancel the process by double-clicking on it. The system tray icon does no get covered up. Thank you to all who responded. I read the article on why there is not a ‘super-on-top’ window. it logically does not work.

13 Answers 13

Form.TopMost will work unless the other program is creating topmost windows.

There is no way to create a window that is not covered by new topmost windows of another process. Raymond Chen explained why.

I was searching to make my WinForms application «Always on Top» but setting «TopMost» did not do anything for me. I knew it was possible because WinAmp does this (along with a host of other applications).

What I did was make a call to «user32.dll.» I had no qualms about doing so and it works great. It’s an option, anyway.

First, import the following namespace:

Add a few variables to your class declaration:

Add prototype for user32.dll function:

Then in your code (I added the call in Form_Load()), add the call:

Hope that helps. Reference

If by «going crazy» you mean that each window keeps stealing focus from the other, TopMost will not solve the problem.

This will show the ‘child’ form without it stealing focus. The child form will also stay on top of its parent even if the parent is activated or focused. This code only works easily if you’ve created an instance of the child form from within the owner form. Otherwise, you might have to set the owner using the API.

I had a momentary 5 minute lapse and I forgot to specify the form in full like this:

But what I really wanted was THIS!

Set the form’s .TopMost property to true.

You probably don’t want to leave it this way all the time: set it when your external process starts and put it back when it finishes.

The way i solved this was by making a system tray icon that had a cancel option.

The following code makes the window always stay on top as well as make it frameless.

What is the other application you are trying to suppress the visibility of? Have you investigated other ways of achieving your desired effect? Please do so before subjecting your users to such rogue behaviour as you are describing: what you are trying to do sound rather like what certain naughty sites do with browser windows.

At least try to adhere to the rule of Least Surprise. Users expect to be able to determine the z-order of most applications themselves. You don’t know what is most important to them, so if you change anything, you should focus on pushing the other application behind everything rather than promoting your own.

This is of course trickier, since Windows doesn’t have a particularly sophisticated window manager. Two approaches suggest themselves:

1. enumerating top-level windows and checking which process they belong to, dropping their z-order if so. (I’m not sure if there are framework methods for these WinAPI functions.)
2. Fiddling with child process permissions to prevent it from accessing the desktop. but I wouldn’t try this until the othe approach failed, as the child process might end up in a zombie state while requiring user interaction.