Alt-Tab - Behavior

Behavior

The use of the modifier key Alt in using Alt+Tab ↹ differs from typical modifier key use in the following ways:

• There is a difference in behavior when the user releases Alt and presses Alt+Tab ↹ again vs. holding Alt continuously while pressing Tab ↹ repeatedly.
• Releasing Alt has an immediate effect: it closes the task switcher and switches to the selected task.

There are many subtleties to the behavior of Alt+Tab ↹, and they have remained mostly unchanged over the years.

The behavior follows these rules:

• If there is more than one top-level window, the task list appears as soon as Tab ↹ is pressed for the first time while Alt is being held down.
• The task list remains open until Alt is released.
• Tab ↹ moves the cursor forward in the list; ⇧ Shift+Tab ↹ moves it backward.
• Tab ↹ or ⇧ Shift+Tab ↹ will autorepeat if held down (useful if there are many windows).
• With the initial press of Tab ↹ or ⇧ Shift+Tab ↹, the selection cursor starts on the window immediately following or immediately preceding the active one.
• If there are no topmost windows above the active window, an initial ⇧ Shift+Tab ↹ wraps the cursor around to the end of the list.
• Using the mouse to click on a task icon in the task window switches to that task (does not work on Windows XP and earlier).
• Pressing Esc or clicking the mouse outside of the task window while Alt is still down cancels the switch.
• The windows are listed by their Z-order.
• Any windows that are "always on top" are placed at the front of the Z-order sequence, followed by the current window and the windows underneath it.
• Switching to a window moves it to the front of the Z-order, with the exception that "always on top" windows remain topmost and at the front of the list.
• When the Alt+Tab ↹ task switcher window is not active, Alt+Esc places the active window at the bottom of the Z-order.
• Alt+⇧ Shift+Esc is equivalent to one Alt+⇧ Shift+Tab ↹ except that minimized windows are selected without being restored.
• Minimizing a window also sends it to the back of the Z-order in the same way as Alt+Esc.

The rules have the following consequences:

• In the absence of "always on top" windows such as Task Manager, pressing Alt, pressing Tab ↹, releasing Tab ↹, and releasing Alt (the typical way keyboard modifiers are used) will always alternate between the two most recent tasks.
• Alt+⇧ Shift+Tab ↹ can restore the most recently minimized window. (If there are "always on top" windows, the lowest of these will be selected instead.)
• Pressing Alt+Tab ↹-Tab ↹ (two tabs with Alt continuously held down) performs the same quick switch back and forth, but between three programs. Any number of Tab ↹ presses can be used to achieve this with any number of windows.

When the task list is initially activated by pressing Alt+Tab ↹, the list is populated this order:

• Any 'always-on-top' top-level windows according to Z-order, front-to-back.
• All ordinary top-level windows according to Z-order, front-to-back.

The task list does not change order while it is open, but the order of tasks can change between invocations of the task list.

Windows Vista changed the default behavior (under most default installations) with its Flip interface. The six most recently used items in the Flip order work as described, then remaining windows are ordered alphabetically by application path (and optionally grouped, depending on the 'group similar taskbar buttons' setting which is enabled by default).