If you go to Task Manager’s Options<\/i> menu and toggle Always on top<\/i>, the Task Manager window disappears briefly, and then returns. What’s the reason for this?<\/p>\n
When Task Manager goes into Always on top<\/i> mode, it’s doing more than just being an always-on-top window in the Windows 8 introduced the concept of windows existing beyond the normal plane of existence. Windows 8 apps, the Start screen, toast notifications, and the lock screen (among other things) all exist in their own world outside those of regular Win32 desktop apps.<\/p>\n An always on top<\/i> Task Manager wants to get in on that action. Otherwise, your Task Manager that’s marked Always on top<\/i> would nevertheless get covered by Windows 8 apps and the Start screen.<\/p>\n When you switch into or out of Always on top<\/i> mode, Task Manager launches a new copy of itself into the alternate universe, and the exits the previous instance. That’s the reason for Task Manager disappearing briefly: The old copy is gone, but the new copy has yet to arrive.<\/p>\n You can observe the effects of this switcheroo by watching the process ID in (ironically) Task Manager. The process ID of Ascending to another plane of existence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-108131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-other"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":" Ascending to another plane of existence.<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}WS_WS_taskman.exe<\/code> will change when you switch into or out of Always on top<\/i> mode.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"