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Prevent Vista From Stealing Program Focus

I see that visitors to my site search for this topic frequently, so I figured I should make a post about it. Let me start by saying, I will not be telling you how to change your Windows Vista registry to prevent programs from stealing focus. Why? Because you don’t need to. By default, Windows Vista (unlike some past Windows versions) already prevents applications from stealing focus. Of course, this doesn’t always work, but in those cases it is usually a poorly made program, not the operating system itself that is at fault. If you search other websites for information about this, you’ll probably find tips about changing the value of “ForegroundLockTimeout” in the registry. This key was used in previous Windows versions, but is ignored in Vista. In other words, that registry key does nothing. If you are the curious type, you can try changing it (it won’t hurt anything, the key is just ignored) and you’ll notice your computers behavior doesn’t change at all.