How to Adjust Taskbar Thumbnail Live Preview Delay Time in Windows 7

Recently we posted about adjusting Taskbar thumbnail delay time. In Windows 7, whenever you hover your mouse cursor over a running application’s button in Taskbar, Windows shows a small thumbnail of running application with a close button.

Windows_7_Taskbar_Thumbnails.png

And if you hover your mouse cursor over the small thumbnail, Windows shows a live preview of the running application and makes all other running applications windows transparent.

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Taskbar_Thumbnail_Live_Previews.png

Today we are sharing a small registry trick which can be used to adjust the live preview delay time. You can set the delay time to 1000 milliseconds (or 1 second) to get the live previews faster.

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 ThumbnailLivePreviewHoverTime

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ThumbnailLivePreviewHoverTime.png

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. Set the value to 1000 for best experience.

Adjust_ThumbnailLivePreviewHoverTim.png

You can use any value but it should be greater than 0.

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

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

BONUS TIP: If you want to completely turn off Live previews, visit this link.

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

Published in: Windows 7

About the author: Vishal Gupta (also known as VG) has been awarded with Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award. He holds Masters degree in Computer Applications (MCA). He has written several tech articles for popular newspapers and magazines and has also appeared in tech shows on various TV channels.

Comments

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

  1. This seems to work in Windows 8 as well! Very neat!
    Though, is there a way to make those previews also disappear at another rate? Thank you.

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