That thing is the worst!

  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

set DisallowShaking dword to 1

This thread has come full circle. An undiscoverable registry key to disable an undesirable feature.

Honest question: where do you discover registry stuff like this?

Google "Windows disable shaking".

lol, the pinnacle of feature discoverability...

Oh yeah. Google to:

- discover which registry key

- discover how to craft shit in a game

- to find where my Android setting is and what the searchterm/keyword for it is.

Without google/duckduckgo 80% of the options in my world would be undiscoverable or take waaaay too much time to figure out.

> discover how to craft shit in a game

If you're refering to Minecraft, one of the reasons why Minecraft blew up that much was that it was around at the exact right time in history: when online gaming had become viable and let's-plays were just becoming a thing. Minecraft, as originally intended, is a communal experience where you learn from the friends you're playing with and from sources on the internet. If I had to describe Minecraft in one sentence, it would be "let me show you that cool thing I saw Pewdiepie do last week". The idea has become commonplace in video gaming at this point, but back then it was fairly new.

(That said, opaque game experiences have been successful before, like the original Legend of Zelda. I guess the schoolyard served a similar purpose back then.)

I also very much hate this feature, and trigger it often. However if you shake the window you have again, all the minimised windows should be restored.

Agreed (re shake again to reverse), but not always - ie if you let off the mouse click , there is no option to shake again to undo the initial shake. Bottom line , I disableded this “feature”. I do think this is one of the best examples of the issues called out by this article/thread. (Or maybe how google docs has a button covering the scroll bar slider once you scroll to the very bottom of a docs file)

This isn't correct. Shaking the window again will restore the minimised windows, whether it's from the original mouse-down or a future mouse-down.

But I agree that it's a bad feature, and IMO it's a rare miss from the Windows UI team who if nothing else have developed excellent window management.

This isn't correct. There is something that happens which makes it forget which windows were open. I am not sure what it is. But is definitely the case that sometimes, I can shake again to put everything back the way I always wanted it, and sometimes I cannot.

You can also disable it but if you want to keep snappy windows you have to do it through a regedit since the two features are not independent for some imo stupid reason.

The most amazing thing about this feature is that no matter how much I try, I never seem to be able to re-shake the window in the proper way (which would bring all windows back up again). But nice that it's at least possible to disable it via a registry hack.

OMG. you just solved a problem I've had for years and couldn't figure out wtf was happening, or even how to google for it. THANK YOU!

Upvoted because I never knew about this. As a user who prefers keyboard short-cuts, I usually press Windows key with D (alternatively, right-click on the task-bar and choose Show Desktop) if I want to minimise all windows.

Anyhow, I just tried shaking a window from my work laptop and discovered that this behaviour activates on the second change of the direction in rapid succession.

While I was experimenting, I also discovered that shaking the window again restores the other windows so you don't have to restore them individually if/when this happens accidentally.

The one I'm unlucky to hit is the "icon resizing" that happens when a moving action on the thumbpad is performed in combination with the pressed ctrl key, which sometimes is not actually pressed but the OS believes it is (some "zombie" state). Happened to me on different notebooks and even on the desktop.

I don't think anybody needs that "quick" way to do that, and that nobody needs to change the icon sizes often. I have no idea if that misfeature could be blocked.

A lot of people don’t know that to undo text operations on IOS you shake the whole phone.

It’s insanity.

I've been back on my windows machine recently for a new side project and, ironically, I've really enjoyed this feature.

It's akin to shaking my head before focusing on a specific task. I shake the task window and the other applications that I still want open but won't be using for a bit all hide away.

There's another "feature" which I rarely hit, and I don't even know how I did, what it's called or for, but when it happens, a draggable divider shows up in the middle of the screen, all my windows get "crushed" on the left side, and the right side is a dark blue/purple blank. I can drag the divider to restore the desktop, but it seriously angers me since none of my windows' original positions nor sizes get restored. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to disable it either. I believe it appeared starting with Win8, as I never saw it in earlier versions.

That sounds awful - glad I've never encountered it. FYI, you can use a lot of the built-in window management functions via keyboard shortcuts - Windows key + Shift + [Left|Right] arrow key moves a window between monitors.

That fucks with me all the time. I hate it so much... But I figured out how to deal with it.

Shake the window again, and they will all come back.

Horrific.