Notifications in Windows are present to draw your attention to programs or areas that require your immediate attention. While this helps in resolving issues quickly it can annoy some. Especially the taskbar icons or buttons which flash, once the program is opened or there is a change in the program. Its icon shows up on the taskbar and begin flashing, becoming golden yellow. It will flash 7 times, after which it will continue to throb gently. In this post, we will see how you can disable the flashing of taskbar buttons or icons or change the count for the number of times it can flash.
Disable Flashing Taskbar buttons
Open the Windows Registry, by typing regedit in Run box. It’s the Windows Registry that stores configuration information about many important parts of Windows operating system. By editing it, you can tune Windows to behave the way you want it. However, modifying the Windows Registry can cause serious problems to your system, so make sure you know what you’re doing and create a system restore point first before proceeding further.
Locate and then click the subkey that holds the registry item or items that you want to change. For this, browse the following path:
Double-click the ForegroundFlashCount entry and change the Value data field to 0. The default on my Windows 8.1 computer is 7 in Hexadecimal.
ForegroundFlashCount specifies the number of times the taskbar button flashes to notify the user that the system has activated a background window. ForegroundLockTimeout specifies the time, following user input, during which the system keeps applications from moving into the foreground. If the time elapsed since the last user input exceeds the value of the ForegroundLockTimeout entry, the window will automatically be brought to the foreground.
So, you may want to also ensure that value of ForegroundLockTimeout is set to 0. The default on my Windows 8.1 computer is 30d40 in Hexadecimal.
After having done this, restart Windows and you should no longer see any flashing icon in the taskbar on your Windows 8.1 computer.
Change the number of time Taskbar button flashes
If you want to Change the number of time Taskbar button flashes, then you can change the value of ForegroundFlashCount from the default 7, to a number between 1 and 6, and restart your computer.
Let us know if this worked for you.
Read next: Microsoft Edge tab flashing incessantly.
Related Posts: