Take full control of your floating windows in Visual Studio

Take full control of your floating windows in Visual Studio - Visual Studio Blog

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• Take full control of your floating windows in Visual Studio

April 7th, 2026

7 reactions

Take full control of your floating windows in Visual Studio

Mads Kristensen

Principal Product Manager

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If you work with multiple monitors like I do, you’ve probably grown to love floating tool windows and documents in Visual Studio. Being able to pull out Solution Explorer, the debugger, or your code files onto a second (or third) screen can be a huge productivity boost.

But there’s always been a bit of friction with how these floating windows behave.

By default, floating windows are “owned” by the main Visual Studio window. That means they don’t show up as separate buttons in your Windows taskbar, they disappear when you minimize the main IDE, and they always stay on top of everything else — even when you don’t want them to.

For some workflows that’s exactly what you want. For others, it gets annoying fast.

Fortunately, there’s a little-known setting that lets you decide exactly how much control Visual Studio has over your floating windows.

The setting is here:Tools > Options > Environment > Windows > Floating Windows

You’ll see this dialog:

The dropdown is labeled “These floating windows are owned by the main window” and gives you three choices:

• None
• Tool Windows (the default)
• Documents and Tool Windows

Changing this one setting can completely transform how you work with floating windows.

My favorite scenario: PowerToys FancyZones

This setting really shines when you combine it with **Microsoft** and its excellent **FancyZones** feature.

I like to set it to None and then use FancyZones to create custom layouts across my monitors. Suddenly all my floating tool windows and documents behave like normal application windows — they appear in the taskbar, stay visible even if I minimize the main Visual Studio window, and I can snap them perfectly into my FancyZones layouts without them forcing themselves to the front all the time.

It feels much more natural and gives me the clean multi-monitor setup I’ve always wanted.

When to choose each option

• None: Maximum independence. Everything gets its own taskbar entry and full window behavior. Perfect for heavy multi-monitor users with PowerToys.
• Tool Windows: A nice middle ground — keep your documents floating freely while tool windows stay tied to the IDE.
• Documents and Tool Windows: The classic Visual Studio behavior.

Pro tip: Combine this with the Ctrl + double-click trick on any tool window title bar (see our earlier post on easily docking and floating tool windows) for lightning-fast layout switching. No restart required.

Have you played with this setting before? What option do you prefer: None, Tool Windows, or the default? Let me know in the comments. I’m always curious how other developers set up multi-monitor workspaces.

Happy coding!

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Author

Mads Kristensen

Principal Product Manager

Mads Kristensen is a Principal Product Manager at Microsoft, working to enhance productivity and usability in Visual Studio. He’s behind popular extensions like Web Essentials and File Nesting and is active in the open-source community. A frequent speaker, Mads is dedicated to making Visual Studio the most enjoyable IDE for developers.

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• Raj Shah April 15, 2026 0 Collapse this comment Copy link Wish I’d known this sooner!

Nit, you a word in this sentence: “This setting really shines when you combine it with Microsoftand its excellent FancyZones feature.” Log in to Vote or Reply

• Felicity Rhone 1 week ago · Edited 1 Collapse this comment Copy link That’s so handy, thanks for the tip!

In my VS version (Visual Studio Professional 2022 17.14.27) the option looks a little different, but I found it:

Environment > Tabs and Windows > Floating Windows, and then de-select the checkbox for ‘Floating tool windows always stay on top of the main window’. Log in to Vote or Reply

• Mads Kristensen 1 week ago 2 Collapse this comment Copy link Thanks. Yes, VS 2022 doesn’t have the new settings system. Thanks for showing where to find it in VS 2022 Log in to Vote or Reply

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