How to Adjust “Aero Peek” Desktop Preview Delay Time in Windows 7

“Aero Peek” is a new feature in Windows 7 which has replaced the old “Show Desktop” shortcut. It can be found as a small rectangle present at the end of Taskbar. When you hover the mouse cursor over it, it allows you to peek behind all open windows by hiding all windows and showing only outlines of all windows.

The default delay time to preview Desktop is set to 1 second by default but sometimes it gets annoying when you accidentally hover your mouse over it.

Today we are sharing a small registry trick which can be used to adjust this delay time. You can set the delay time to 2,3 or more seconds according to your requirements.

So here we start the tutorial:

1. Type regedit in RUN or Start Menu Searchbox and press Enter. It’ll open Registry Editor.

2. Now go to following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

3. In right-side pane, create a new DWORD value DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime

4. Now you’ll need to set its value to your desired delay time. Double-click on it and select “Base” as Decimal and enter the desired value. Remember the value should be given in milliseconds, so if you want to set the delay time to 4 seconds, set the value to 4000

5. That’s it. Log off or restart your system to take effect.

NOTE: If you want to restore default settings, simply delete “DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime” DWORD value created in Step 3.

PS: If you want a ready-made script to do the task automatically, download following ZIP file, extract it and run the extracted REG file. It’ll ask for confirmation, accept it:

Download Registry Script

Comments

NOTE: Older comments have been removed to reduce database overhead.

Sandy says:

November 4, 2011 at 6:23 pm

Thanks for the tutorial.

If you ‘dont want a delay’ in the Window max/minimize you could disable the below animation option-

Right Click on My Computer > Click on System Properties
Click on “Advanced System Settings” (Left side pane)
Click on the “Advanced” tab
Now Click on “Settings” under Performance group
Remove Checkbox for “Animate windows when minimizing and maximzing”
Hit “Apply”

(You dont have to log off/restart)

The maximizing/minimizing will now be “instant”

Cheers 😉

Regards,
sandy
taylor says:

January 31, 2020 at 12:43 am

Hi there,

I’ve had this laptop for a long time and of late my Aero Peek to preview other applications (like Excel or Word) has taken to abruptly dropping unless I continually move the mouse over the small window that comes up from the task bar. I want it to go back to lasting indefinitely, as long as I keep my mouse over it.

I’m on Windows 7, but I don’t have the “DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime” in my regedit. It simply isn’t there. Nor are a lot of the items in your list. I don’t know what to do.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Taylor

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