Focus-follows-mouse<\/strong><\/p>\nBelieve it or not, Windows does support focus-follows-mouse, though there is no GUI configuration exposing it. Instead you must edit a registry key and then log out and back in for the change to become effective. You can use regedit to edit the key.<\/p>\n
On Windows 2000, XP, or 2003, you need to change a binary-valued registry key:<\/p>\n
HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktopUserPreferencesMask<\/p>\n
This is a little-endian bitmask. For focus-follows-mouse, add the flag 0x1. For example, my XP SP2 laptop originally had a value of 9E 3E 05 80, which is 0x80053E9E. To activate focus-follows-mouse I changed to 0x80053E9F, or 9F 3E 05 80 in regedit.<\/p>\n
According to http:\/\/www.winguides.com\/registry\/display.php\/18\/ you can also achieve raise-on-focus by adding the flag 0x40. I haven’t tested that as I don’t like raise-on-focus.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I haven’t tried the raise on focus thing yet, but I might!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is a solution that has been bugging me ever since I set up my dual monitors at work. The default behavior of Windows XP is to NOT have the focus follow the mouse, which results in lots and lots … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[92],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geek","tag-windows"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NxlE-1t","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":56,"url":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/reinstalling-xp\/","url_meta":{"origin":91,"position":0},"title":"Reinstalling XP","author":"matthannan","date":"4 March 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"So, last night, as soon as I got home, I synced my bookmarks with Xmarks, took one last look around my XP install for docs\/files that needed to be moved out to the server (Rosetta Stone Irish Level 1 final progress report and tracking.db!!!!) and then rebooted to reinstall XP.This\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Geek"","block_context":{"text":"Geek","link":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/category\/geek\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10,"url":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/jolicloud-netbook-os\/","url_meta":{"origin":91,"position":1},"title":"Jolicloud netbook OS","author":"matthannan","date":"3 December 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The version I am running is Private Alpha 2c (Developer's Edition), so I am not expecting a lot out of it, especially after my last couple of nights looking at Moblin v2.0 and v2.1. But, I'll tell you what, those Moblin devs have a LOT of work ahead of them\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Geek"","block_context":{"text":"Geek","link":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/category\/geek\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2817,"url":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/adding-irish-fada-support-to-ansi-keyboard-in-linux\/","url_meta":{"origin":91,"position":2},"title":"Adding Irish fada Support to ANSI keyboard…in Linux","author":"Posted Via Email","date":"16 January 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"This guide explains how to create a custom US keyboard layout that supports Irish fadas (accented vowels) using the right Windows key. What This Does Maintains standard US ANSI keyboard layout Adds Irish fada support: Right Windows + vowel = \u00e1, \u00e9, \u00ed, \u00f3, \u00fa Works with Shift for capitals:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Geek"","block_context":{"text":"Geek","link":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/category\/geek\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":24,"url":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/a-good-night-of-geeking\/","url_meta":{"origin":91,"position":3},"title":"A Good Night of Geeking!!!","author":"matthannan","date":"9 February 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"For some reason tonight, I decided to not play around with beer and mead too much. They are doing their thing quite happily. Sometimes after a rough day in the saltmines, I'll come home and drink a beer or three. Sometimes I will sit down to geek out. Very therapeutic,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Geek"","block_context":{"text":"Geek","link":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/category\/geek\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9,"url":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/chromeos\/","url_meta":{"origin":91,"position":4},"title":"ChromeOS","author":"matthannan","date":"2 December 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A happy accident for me tonight. A misclick while trying to install the Jolicloud Live iso on a USB key left me booting my netbook into Google's ChromeOS. I was amazed that it actually worked!From power on to log-in to Web was, literally, seconds.Here is a quick and dirty review.You\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/chromeos\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2456,"url":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/what-i-did-on-my-mid-summer-vacation-day-4\/","url_meta":{"origin":91,"position":5},"title":"What I Did on My Mid-Summer Vacation: Day 4","author":"matthannan","date":"5 August 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Plan for the day was to limp my broken butt out to the yard and get the three beams in place and leveled. While having breakfast, Lowe's had other ideas. Son of a biscuit! So, obviously, there is no longer a rush for me to get the beams in place.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Genealogy"","block_context":{"text":"Genealogy","link":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/category\/genealogy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/IMG_20220805_153240-scaled.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/IMG_20220805_153240-scaled.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/IMG_20220805_153240-scaled.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/IMG_20220805_153240-scaled.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/IMG_20220805_153240-scaled.jpg?resize=1050%2C600 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/IMG_20220805_153240-scaled.jpg?resize=1400%2C800 4x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":277,"href":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions\/277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}