Shortcut to switch to 'next' window in Windows 10

I would like to know how to simply switch to the 'next' application on Windows 10 via keyboard shortcut without having to interact with the pop-up window. Instead of having to hold down alt and tab through the GUI, I just want a repeatable keystroke that just directly switches to the next app. Alt-Tab bounces you back and forth between the same two apps. Is this doable without changing to a different Window manager like bug.n?

Solution 1:

Key Description 
Alt + Esc Switches to the next open window 

Alt + Shift + Esc Switches to the previous open window 

Alt + Tab Cycles through open windows, and switches to the window when the Alt key is released. This is known as Coolswitch. Pressing Escape cancels switching windows. 


Alt + Shift + Tab Cycles backwards through open windows, and switches to the window when the Alt key is released. This is known as Coolswitch. Pressing Escape cancels switching windows.

Ctrl + Alt + Tab Vista: Starts Windows Coolswitch. Use Arrow keys, Tab, or Shift + Tab to navigate and Enter or Space to activate. Pressing Escape cancels switching windows. 

Winkey + T Toggle speech dictation mode.
Vista: Cycles through Taskbar buttons, Press Enter or Space to activate a window. This is same as Winkey + Tab in older versions. 

Winkey + Tab Cycles through Taskbar buttons, Press Enter or Space to activate a window.
Vista: Cycles through open windows using Windows Flip3D. Release keys to activate window. Pressing Escape cancels switching windows. 

Winkey + Ctrl + Tab Cycles through parts of the desktop and taskbar.
Vista: Starts Windows Flip3D. Use Arrow keys, Tab, or Shift + Tab to navigate and Enter or Space to activate. Pressing Escape cancels switching windows. 

Windows Vista changed the Alt+Tab order slightly

For decades, the Alt+Tab order was the same as the Z-order, but that changes in Windows Vista if you use the enhanced Alt+Tab feature known as Flip, which is on by default on most systems. There are three types of interactive task switching in Windows Vista:

Classic Alt+Tab: This is the same one that's been around since Windows 95. It shows a grid of icons.

Flip (new for Windows Vista): This shows a grid of thumbnails.

Flip3D (also new for Windows Vista): This shows a stack of windows in 3D.

Classic Alt+Tab continues to show the icons in Z-order order, but the developer who wrote Flip told me that Flip changed it up a bit based on feedback from the design team. The first several icons are still shown in Z-order order, but if you have a lot of windows open, the rest of them are shown in alphabetical order to make it easier to pick the one you want from the list. I think it's a good sign that nobody seems to have noticed. A lot of user interface work tries to be invisible.

Posted by oldnewthing

The icons appear in the same order as the window Z-order. When you switch to a window, then it comes to the top of the Z-order. If you minimize a window, it goes to the bottom of the Z-order. The Alt+Esc hotkey (gosh, does anybody still use Alt+Esc?) takes the current top window and sends it to the bottom of the Z-order (and the window next in line comes to the top). The Alt+Shift+Esc hotkey (I bet you didn't know that hotkey even existed) takes the bottom-most window and brings it to the top, but does not open the window if it is minimized.

The presence of "always on top" windows makes this a little more complicated. The basic rule is that an "always on top" window always appears on top of a "not always on top" window. So if the above rules indicate that a "not always on top" window comes to the top, it really just goes as high as it can without getting on top of any "always on top" windows.

You may have run across the term "fast task switching". This was the term used to describe the precursor to the current Alt+Tab switching interface. The old way of switching via Alt+Tab (Windows 3.0 and earlier) was just like Alt+Esc, except that the window you switched to was automatically opened if it had been minimized. When the new Alt+Tab was added to Windows 3.1, we were concerned that people might prefer the old way, so there was a switch in the control panel to set it back to the slow way. (There is also a setting SPI_SETFASTTASKSWITCH that lets you change it programmatically.) It turns out nobody complained, so the old slow way of task switching was removed entirely and the setting now has no effect.

This does highlight the effort we take to try to allow people who don't like the new way of doing something to go back to the old way. It turns out that corporations with 10,000 employees don't like it when the user interface changes, because it forces them to spend millions of dollars retraining all their employees. If you open up the Group Policy Editor, you can see the zillions of deployment settings that IT administrators can use to disable a variety of new Windows UI features.

Published Monday, October 20, 2003 3:58 AM by oldnewthing

Solution 2:

You can use 7+ Taskbar Tweaker. Read this answer.