Move Off Screen Window Back

I’m sure you have faced this situation many times when a program window opens in a way that you can’t see either its titlebar or the whole program window. Most of the times it happens when you close a full screen program like a game or movie. This also happens when you run windows in Dual monitor mode and then sweetch back to one device.

Some applications do the favour of preserving where they were last closed, and opening in the same position later. Unfortuanately, sometimes they places out of the viewable area of screens! So if you face such kind of problem in future, how will you fix it? How will you move or resize an off-screen window? Don’t worry! Here is the solution.

Cascading Hidden Window Back

The first option you have is also the most likely not to work, and the one most likely to leave you with a mess to clean up after. The easiest way to get back a hidden window is to just right-click on the Taskbar and click Cascade windows.

This will immediately cascade all of the open windows, moving off screen window back onto the screen. Unfortunately, many media players will not reposition in this manner, and it forces ALL of your windows to reposition - even the ones that were behaving themselves. If that doesn’t work, proceed with the keyboard trick below.

Manually Moving Off Screen Window

While it may seem odd to talk about manually moving a window that you can’t even get to with your mouse, there is actually a way to control the window’s position with your keyboard. If you’re using Windows 7, 8 or 10 this can be done by holding the Shift key and right-clicking the program’s taskbar icon.

Select Move from the menu that appears, and begin pressing the arrow keys to force the window to move position. Alternatively, if you put the program in focus by left-clicking on its taskbar icon, you can move the window by holding the Windows key and pressing the arrow keys.

Maximizing the window

This is more of a temporary fix than the other options. Hold the Shift key and right-click on the program’s icon and select Maximize from the menu that appears. This will force the window to go full screen on your monitor, which will at least let you view its contents. This will likely only last as long as you don’t remove the maximization. As soon as you go back to normal-window-mode, the window will resume its offscreen position.

You use this approach with keyboard only:

  • Use ALT + TAB to switch to the off-screen application.
  • Press ALT + SPACE to bring up the system menu (you won’t see it because it is off screen).
  • Press R to select the "Restore" menu choice to ensure the windows isn’t is maximized (you can not move if it’s maximized).
  • Press ALT + SPACE again, then M to select the "Move" menu choice.
  • Press one of the arrow keys to initiate the movement.
  • Now just use the mouse to place the window where you want.

If you are using a non-english version of Windows, the "R" and "M" menu choices probably will be different.

This should work on any version of Windows and fix the issue of offscreen windows. It’s really amazing how many people are not aware of this little trick.