There are many little tricks in Windows, including a handy companion for the Aero Shake display feature.
What is ‘Aero Shake’?
First introduced with Windows 7 and available on all OS versions since Aero Shake is a way to minimize all open windows on your desktop. Except one. As the feature’s name implies, what you want to keep is the window you “shake”.
Get Shakin ‘
Aero Shake is easy to use: grab the window you want to isolate by clicking on the title bar – it’s the bar at the top of the window, usually with a red “X” in the upper right corner. Capture it by clicking and holding the left mouse button.
Now shake the mouse back and forth and fast while continuing to hold the button. After a few quick shakes, all other open windows on your desktop will automatically minimize to the taskbar. That way, they’ll still be ready to use when you’re prepared to take out the chaos of your new order.
To bring up windows and restore your desktop, do the same shake again.
The Aero Shake takes a bit of getting used to, but if you do it a few times, you’ll quickly get the hang of it. The key is not to move the vibrating window too far from the screen for you to activate the hot corner feature like when you touch the upper right corner of the screen with the program window to zoom in.
If you do something like that, all of your vibrations will be in vain.
You might be asking yourself, “why would I want to use such a feature in the first place?” The answer is straightforward. Sometimes you only need to focus on a single window when you have tons of program windows open.
You go through each window on the screen and close or minimize them, but it doesn’t work very well, right?
Alternatively, you can click Show Desktop and reopen the window you want, but it’s a waste of time only if you gently shake it.
If Aero Shake seems like something might (or has) bother the heck out of you, unfortunately, no easy solution. The only way to turn it off is to dive deep into a part of Windows dedicated to users with the registry’s power. This is not a difficult problem to solve but disabling Aero Shake is beyond this article’s purpose. Besides, it would be best if you messed around with it unless you are an experienced user. However, this guide on disabling Aero Shake in Windows 7 will help if that’s you.
Bonus tip
If the Aero Shake feels like a useful tip you want to use, a few others are worth knowing about similar control over open windows and appearance. We talked about the top right corner trick for automatically maximizing the window.
Another hot corner in the lower right corner of your desktop – it’s a pity these hot corners don’t work in Windows 8 because Microsoft added another functionality to that version of Windows. Drag the window down to the lower right in Windows 7 or Windows 10, and it will automatically shrink exactly half of your screen on the right-hand side.
Drag the window to the lower left, and you will drag it down to the left half of the screen.
Aero Shake and other little tricks for manipulating your open program windows aren’t for everyone. But if you need an effective way to deal with all the different programs you use in one day, they can help.
