5

Today, I was working and I tried to access the taskbar. However, it didn't pop up. I moved my mouse off of Firefox and the taskbar unhid, as it should have, but Firefox was on top. As far as I can tell, every time I move focus to Firefox, it goes over the taskbar.

Now, this is a problem. I need to be able to access the taskbar whenever I want to, without moving my windows around to get a clear look at the desktop. (Yes, I'm aware that there's a button on the taskbar to minimize all windows, but the key thing here is that it's covered. Like the rest of the taskbar.) As far as I can tell, this is only happening with Firefox, though I do remember it happening with other applications, albeit not every time I focus the window.

How can I stop the taskbar from being hidden by Firefox? Is it possible to do this without compromising the ability to allow full-screen appliations to go on top?

I've done a bit more testing, and at least at the moment, this is what's happening:

  1. I'm having a wonderful day, editing this post.

  2. I move my mouse to the bottom of the screen:

    Confetti rains from the sky in a glorious hail of death and terror.

  3. I sigh exasperatedly and click on the taskbar.

  4. The taskbar goes above Firefox.
  5. I do whatever I had to do with the taskbar.
  6. I go back to Firefox.
  7. Repeat.

NB: I am explicitly not looking for a one-time solution. Sure, it's just another couple of clicks and maybe a drag, but having to do that every time is a pain in the cloud.

NB 2: Also, it's not every time I start Firefox, only about one in ten (ish; I haven't been using Win10 much).

4 Answers4

5

"Show desktop" never worked for me, but I've noticed that if I hit F11 twice, the taskbar returns to normal. Not that that's any kind of solution, but it's easier than restarting Firefox.

bad_coder
  • 649
EPat
  • 61
1

I'm having the same problem too. I briefly managed to get it to behave with the "Show Desktop" command (like the original poster I used dual monitors), but this time it failed. Using Process Hacker I was able to verify that generally all Firefox windows are set to "Always On Top", even tabs that aren't active. (Miscellaneous > Windows). Toggling that doesn't work either. I also noticed another program beneath it (Pidgin) also had all its tabbed windows set to "Always On Top". After turning the flag off on all the instances AND doing a Explorer restart in Process Manager it finally behaved. I suspect it's a bug in Explorer in Windows 10.

Richard Robertson
  • 11
0

Sounds like you have Firefox in full screen mode. Press F11 on your keyboard to return it back to a normal window.

bad_coder
  • 649
tyelford
  • 440
0

I've had it happen a few times now, and so far the following things have worked:

  • Restarting Firefox (though this is not always an option)
  • Restarting Explorer (causes some bugs of its own, though these are easier to fix)

I'm trying new things every time it happens, but so far it hasn't happened often enough for me to check many things, and I keep restarting Explorer before remembering I have other things to test.