Change Visual Effects Settings in Windows 10  

Brink said:

Hello @CompSuperAC, and welcome to Ten Forums.

You could use Option 4 in the tutorial below to toggle on/off Peek.

Turn On or Off Peek at Desktop in Windows 10

Thanks! I'm happy to be here!

In the case of Show window contents while dragging shown below, if I change it in the Performance window on the left, hit apply and hit F5 in Regedit that value will update (I had set this up as a DWord and it actually will switch it to a Reg_SZ which was helpful to troubleshoot this)
Drag full windows Before

Drag full windows After


For the documented Peek entries, no change is made when I choose Apply

Enable Peek Before

Enable Peek After


Is there another spot where I need to change this?

Brink said:

I had to restart the explorer.exe process to apply the change for Peek.

Huh, I just ran your linked .bat file and I still can't get the darn thing to work. Maybe there's something weird with the computers I'm using to test this.

Another weird thing is I cannot get my entire file to apply unless I run it, sign out, and sign in again (I added it to my startup folder for testing so I'm not sure if I need to run it again), it seems like it does some things the first time but not all. I wish I knew exactly what Windows does when I hit Apply and I could just add that to my script.

That is correct

Oh my bad, that's what it did when I did it through the Performance menu, when I ran the .bat script you linked it did not grey that option out and it's still checked.

Brink said:

@CompSuperAC,

Ok. I found the change, and have updated the .bat files in Option 4 below to work again for Peek.

Turn On or Off Peek at Desktop in Windows 10

Yaay! That works for me! I left the other line in my script as you did with yours in case if some computers need it and some don't.

Real quick, it looks like your notes say the drag full window option is a DWord but I could only get it to work as a Boolean, also your article on Animate Controls and Elements inside windows doesn't have a section about how to modify this in the registry, with my testing (I also read this on EightForums) 9012038010000000 disables that and 9012038012000000 enables it, I don't how that gets calculated with your binary notes but hopefully someone down the road can use that.

Here is my updated script:

Code:

:: Created: 2019-5-16 
:: Last modified: 2019-5-23
:: Author: CompSuperAC
:: Source on most of this: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/6377-change-visual-effects-settings-windows-10-a.html

:: This script only works on the second login for whatever reason, apparently when people made similar scripts for XP that was also the case

:: This doesn't seem to do anything but I'm leaving it in
@echo off

:: Set performance radio button to best performance (this may not be necessary because of the whole "two login" thing)
REG ADD "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VisualEffects" /V VisualFXSetting /T REG_DWORD /D 2 /F

:: Set performance radio button to custom
REG ADD "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VisualEffects" /V VisualFXSetting /T REG_DWORD /D 3 /F

:: The below are set with a UserPreferencesMask, 9012038010 represents those settings converted from binary to hex,
:: that article above explains this but the example they gave with all options turned off is what was needed for this request
:: so no Binary to Hex conversion is needed

:: Animate controls and elements inside windows
:: Smooth-scroll list boxes
:: Slide open combo boxes
:: Fade or slide menus into view
:: Show shadows under mouse pointer
:: Fade or slide ToolTips into view 
:: Fade out menu items after clicking
:: Show shadows under windows 

REG ADD "HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop" /V "UserPreferencesMask" /T REG_BINARY /D 9012038010000000 /F

:: To maintain the order of the Windows 10 performance menu, references will be made for all of the UserPreferencesMask settings

:: Animate controls and elements inside windows
:: See UserPreferencesMask
:: https://www.eightforums.com/threads/animate-controls-and-elements-inside-windows-on-or-off.39657/


:: Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing
REG ADD "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics" /V MinAnimate /T REG_SZ /D 0 /F

:: Animations in taskbar
REG ADD "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced" /V TaskbarAnimations /T REG_DWORD /D 0 /F

:: Enable Peek (this might work on some computers, I'm leaving it in, see below)
REG ADD "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced" /V DisablePreviewDesktop /T REG_DWORD /D 1 /F

:: Enable Peek (works on my computer)
REG ADD "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\DWM" /V EnableAeroPeek /T REG_DWORD /D 0 /F

:: Fade or slide menus into view
:: See UserPreferencesMask

:: Fade or slide menus into view
:: See UserPreferencesMask

:: Fade out menu items after clicking 
:: See UserPreferencesMask

:: Show shadows under windows
:: See UserPreferencesMask

:: Save taskbar thumbnail previews
REG ADD "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM" /V AlwaysHibernateThumbnails /T REG_DWORD /D 0 /F

:: Show shadows under mouse pointer
:: See UserPreferencesMask

:: Show thumbnails instead of icons
REG ADD "HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced" /V IconsOnly /T REG_DWORD /D 0 /F

:: Show translucent selection rectangle
REG ADD "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced" /V ListviewAlphaSelect /T REG_DWORD /D 0 /F

:: Show window contents while dragging
REG ADD "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop"  /V DragFullWindows /T REG_SZ /D 1 /F

:: Slide open combo boxes
:: See UserPreferencesMask

::Smooth edges of screen fonts
REG ADD "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop"  /V FontSmoothing /T REG_SZ /D 2 /F

:: Smooth-scroll list boxes
:: See UserPreferencesMask

:: Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop
REG ADD "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced"  /V ListviewShadow /T REG_DWORD /D 1 /F

:: Restart explorer (doesn't achieve the goal of making this work without logging out and back in, keeping this commented out for now)
:: taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
:: start explorer.exe