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How to Remove Dotted Focus Rectangle Around Buttons and Other Items in Windows

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In Windows, whenever we select an item such as drop-down list, button, check box etc, a dotted focus rectangle is automatically shown around the selected item as shown in following screenshot:

Focus_Rectangle.png

The rectangle also appears on buttons, etc in dialog boxes. Although it’s shown to help users in easily find out the control item which is having focus but it doesn’t look good and many people want to get rid of it.

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If you want to disable the focus rectangle in your Windows device, following methods will help you:

How to Disable or Remove Focus Rectangle Using DLL

Thanks to our friend “localhost” who made a small program to remove the annoying focus rectangle which works in almost every version of Windows.

1. First download following ZIP file and extract it:

It seems the official download page is no longer available so we have uploaded the utility at our server for your convenience.

Download Link

2. You’ll get a DLL file “RemoveFocusRectangle.dll” in the extracted folder. Copy this DLL file to C:\Windows\System32 folder. You can directly open this folder by typing system32 in RUN or Start Menu search box and press Enter.

PS: If you are using 64-bit version of Windows, copy the DLL file to C:\Windows\SysWOW64 folder too.

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3. Now open Command Prompt as Administrator using steps given here and execute following command:

regsvr32 RemoveFocusRectangle.dll

4. Close Command Prompt and restart Windows and you’ll never see the annoying focus rectangle again.

PS: If you want to uninstall this patch in future, simply execute following command in Command Prompt:

regsvr32 /u RemoveFocusRectangle.dll

After executing the above command to uninstall the patch, you can also safely delete the DLL file from System32 and SysWOW64 folders.

How to Get Rid of Focus Rectangle Using Registry Editor

Our reader “Auracle” shared following Registry tweak disable or hide the focus rectangle around items in Windows.

1. Press “WIN+R” key combination to launch RUN dialog box then type regedit and press Enter. It’ll open Registry Editor.

2. Now go to following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

3. In right-side pane, look for following DWORDs

  • FocusBorderHeight
  • FocusBorderWidth

Both DWORDs values are set to 1. Double-click on both DWORDs and change their value to 0

Disable_Remove_Highlight_Focus_Rectangle_Border_Windows.png

Restart your computer and the focus rectangle around selected or highlighted items will disappear.

UPDATE:

A new method has been posted at following link:

[Windows 10 Tip] Remove Thick Highlight Border from Focused Items

Published in: Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, Windows XP

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.

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Comments

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  1. I skimmed through alot of websites, this is the only thing that actually worked! Just make sure you do a reboot after you install and then try shift+clicking on something. If no dotted lines appear, then it worked!

  2. The problem is: when I try to regsrv32 the DLL, I get an error message that says “Regsvr32: the module was loaded but the entry-point dllregisterserver was not found”.

  3. Hello, this file fix only works for windows 7, vista, or xp in only 32 bit format. i would like to see a windows 8/8.1 32 AND 64 bit fix. Been looking everywhere and alot of people are asking for the fix, but none have published or found a solution, thanks

  4. Dotted focus outline was a rush-to-8 boo-boo now buries under too many layers for Microsoft to save itself: according to senior Microsoft Research and Development. I was told to use it as a flag, since we confirmed (at least on my machine) that the “boo-boo-bug” creates self-replicating system cache garbage. Left unchecked, one visible dotted icon outline on desktop will progress to two dotted icon outlines, at which time unusual HK User roots of same name will appear in Registry and even if you want to ignore the desktop dotted icon outline (singular) when it appears, you are now sinking into BSOC nightmare and your Windows installation is “not recoverable”. Good advice: when you see a dotted outline, immediately Restart your machine. This may delay Windows reinstallation for even months. Microsoft’s muti-layer WINDOWS miracle will maybe get its boo-boo-bug restrained in some sort of useful annexation of function round-about release 6,v11 (Windows 11) or later. Whoever chalked up RemoveFocusRectangle.dll did a lot of homework! 2015 March dl is of a 2007 January effort (uh-oh). However, since the boo-boo-bug is a formal backboard “Recovery Focus” at Research and Development, fair guess that sooner than later each version of RemoveFocusRectangle.dll will have to be urgently updated at short notice, to tag into whatever turns in the witches gut.

  5. Essential testing hardware would be Sandybridge (Mac or Win), anything else will most certainly fry.

  6. Hi!
    Here is the very simple fix for 64 bit Windows 7:
    1. Place RemoveFocusRectangle.dll into %windir%\SysWOW64
    2.open command line (run cmd.exe) an an administrator
    3. cd %windir%\SysWOW64
    4. regsvr32 RemoveFocusRectangle.dll
    5. Relog, and you are fine.

  7. Hi all! I’m hoping whoever did/does the programming for RemoveFocusRectangle.dll will rewrite it so it works with Windows 10 (both 32 and especially 64bit) under the new UEFI bootup scheme. I just “upgraded” to a new 6th Gen i7 computer, and like all computers being made nowadays it utilizes UEFI… from what I’ve read this wreaks havoc with RemoveFocusRectangle.dll. That would make sense, as before the upgrade I was running Windows 10 on a 64bit Duo Core Quad machine and RemoveFocusRectangle.dll worked fine. Now though, nothing I’ve tried gets rid of this hideous leftover from the 1990s. I even tried changing my BIOS to Legacy boot rather than UEFI, but that didn’t work, it just left me with an unbootable computer. So please VG, or some bright programmer, please provide us with a new and improved solution to remove the focus rectangle. —Thanks 🙂

  8. Fixed the issue, but I HAVE A WORSE PROBLEM

    every button in office 2016 has this stupid rectangle

    It wasn’t there, now it is. How do i get rid of it.

  9. Yeah it works …. (sort of) some things still have the focus rectangle even with the 64 bit fix posted by Naspolya.

  10. Someone smart really needs to develop a newer version of this, or maybe the original creator will bless us with an update one day. One could hope…

  11. Windows 10. Here are two ways to turn off the rectangle through a Windows setting.
    Option 1: Press your Windows key to open the Start panel.
    Don’t look for a field, just type: Narrator.
    Click the option: Narrator (desktop app)
    The Narrator Settings window opens. Click: General.
    Find the option: “Highlight cursor”
    Clear the check mark from this box.
    Click: Save Changes
    All fixed, close the window.
    Option 2: This setting is can also be found under Notifications > All Settings >Ease of Access > Narrator > Cursor and Keys. Turn off the option: Highlight the cursor. All fixed, close the window.

  13. I saw this behavior just appear on my machine, but it coming because Narrator was on. Turning off Narrator removed the thick, aqua-colored borders on focused items.

  14. I really wish this worked… tried changing narrator options and still doesn’t work.
    I swear I got it to work for one or two reboot cycles, but then the problem immediately (and seemingly randomly) crops back up. I’ve disabled all non-essential programs to see if anything could be to blame, but simply cannot get this to stay working. Please help!!

  15. This Is Working For Windows 10 Home Single Language Version 1809 (OS Build 17763.805) Manny Thanks To VG,Hope You Have A Good Day!

  16. There a mistake, you have a type in the command prompt not regsvr32 RemoveFocusRectangle.dll, but the correct name of dll, which is regsvr32 RemoveFocusRect.dll

  19. This DLL cannot be trusted. So I actually fixed the issue from the source. Make a new text file, paste this in it and then change the extension to .reg then launch it. Boom. Enjoy. AuracleTech on GitHub if you search me!

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

    [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
    “FocusBorderHeight”=dword:00000000
    “FocusBorderWidth”=dword:00000000

  20. This actually worked for windows 11. Even though the first solution (DLL) didn’t work as expected, the second one worked perfectly. I was so annoyed with the thin layer outside of the icons after pressing on the blank spots to make it disappear. I found the second one relatively a lot easier (both are easy). Thanks for the solution!

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