In Windows 10, can you make background windows not register mouse clicks used to bring them to foreground?

Question

For example, I have a window playing video in the entire window.. when I click to bring it to the foreground, it also pauses the video.

Or some webpages will respond when I click to bring the web browser to the foreground.

I'd like a way to do it for all windows, but if there's something just for chrome, that would fix most of my issues.

Answer 1

If you don't mind changing your mouse behavior slightly, you can enable the ability to focus on a window simply by hovering the pointer over it (no left-click necessary). This is a standard feature for Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 10.

To enable this feature:

1. Go to the Control Panel and select Ease of Access.

2. Under the Ease of Access Center, choose "Change how your mouse works".

3. Look for the subheading "Make it easier to manage windows" and enable the first checkbox "Activate a window by hovering over it with the mouse."

Left-click will still act normally (e.g start/pause videos) but it will no longer be required to bring windows to the foreground (into focus). This feature applies to all windows.

As a small note about full screen videos, you will likely need to Alt-Tab or select other windows from the Taskbar if they are covered (since there are no window edge to detect.)

But if a full screen video is playing in the background while a second window is on top of it, moving the mouse to the full screen video will bring it to the foreground (and cover any other windows as normal).