Alt + Tab function is broken in 20H2 build while using MS Edge only

[Fursan]

@Elliot Kirk 

Issue only arises whenever Edge (including insider builds) is open. After alt tabbing successively Alt + Tab doesn't always switch to the last Window/Edge-tab because it switches to the 3rd recent tab and keeps shuffling between 3 Window/Edge-tab. The only solution is to not use Edge yet. Issue remains same no matter what Alt + Tab behavior is set in Settings -> Multitasking. This is making Edge unusable for me. I also tried resetting my PC that didn't work either.

Feedback hub post, Another feedback for reference 

Update: There's a fix coming in Build 20231 according to Microsoft official response.

Windows-10-insider-preview-build-20231 <- Mentioned in the changelog too.

Reference feedback link with official Microsoft response 

 

[#2]

Why do you expect ALT + Tab to automatically switch to the last tab/Window ?!
I'm using ALT + Tab on Windows 10 20H2 and Edge Dev, (with 10 tabs open and 4 program windows), the experience is expected and I don't see anything wrong with it.

try to post a video or explain in more details how to reproduce this

[#3]

@Fursan Same than @HotCakeX i even have tested it with another browser set by default and even with this the alt + tab work in the same way as @HotCakeX have explain.

A video how to reproduce, is needed i thinks (if you do it don't forget to remove every personal data visible on your desktop).

If we can reproduce it will fixed easily ^^

[#4]

@HotCakeX @Wittycat  Updated thread with Video.

[#5]

@Fursan 

so sometimes when Alt + tabbing fast, the focus jumps to a 3rd window. I can reproduce it intermittently.

best thing is to use mouse to select correct window or make sure the correct window is being selected with Tab button (the white highlight around the selected window)

[#6]

I got the same problem. It will ramdomly switch to the 3rd window.

[#7]

@HotCakeX It also happens when I'm alt + tabbing slowly. Anyways I found the cause of this I had Firefox developer edition installed that was causing the issue with Edge after removing firefox everything is normal. This is extremely strange.

[#8]

Nice, that's good to know what was causing it

[#9]

@HotCakeX It worked for a couple hours now its broken again :(

 This time I recorded it doing slowly. I clean flashed Windows yesterday clearly this is a serious bug.

[#10]

That's not slow.
slow means using the White highlight around the window to select it, it's impossible to choose the wrong window then.
when the white highlight is around a window, that window will be opened.

[#11]

I'm having exactly the same issue as described by @Fursan (thank you for taking the time to record a video). This started with the latest Windows 20H2 update (with the new alt tab "features"). This happens regardless of the speed of alt-tabbing, and I have no other browsers installed apart from Edge. The multi-tasking setting is set to Open Windows Only.

Can this please be escalated to MS Windows support? (I'm not sure who monitors these forums)

This is extremely disruptive to day-to-day workflow (every time I switch an app I have to alt-tab, check whether it's highlighting the third window instead of the second window, then shift alt tab to move back to the second window)

[#12]

@yaring https://github.com/microsoft/WinDev/issues/40

The issue is reported in the above link.

[#13]

Yes, me too facing this issue since the feature is implemented in release preview builds. They mentioned in first few builds that they fixed some issue related to Alt+tab experience, but didn't mentioned what exactly was fixed. I always checked the release notes of every build to see that whether this is fixed or not but the issue is still same.

When doing Alt+tab to quickly switch windows, after few attempts it starts switching between 3 windows rather than 2. Although switching windows quickly is a rare thing, but it's important in few use cases like when you are comparing something like images, text etc on 2 windows. In this case you just want to quickly switch windows to know exact & fine differences.

This quick switching functionality of Alt+tab works perfectly fine when feature that includes Edge tabs in Alt+tab is turned off from Windows Multi-tasking settings. Also, this issue is I think of OS level rather than just the browser issue. So, it might be fixed in a future build of Windows 10 but don't know when it's going to be fixed. The more important question is how a feature is completely rolled out without fixing all related issues and many are still facing this issue that is impacting their productivity.