fallout 4 keeps alt tabbing out

[Squidge]

tried to fix it with windowless bordered but the resolution cant go high enough

[Death Approaches]

hey. what the hell are you talking about, if you're pressing alt-tab nothing is going to stop that, that keypress is being intercepted by the underlying OS not the game, it's part of the window manager of (as far as I know) every single OS in use... you're saying if you roll your mouse past the edge, it leaves the game and takes focus to what's underneath? That's actually cool, most people have the opposite, the intentionally alt-tab to something else, but the mouse pointer doesn't show up they can still look around in Fallout but type in the window that has focus. (forced hardware cursor on maybe?)

Anyway just edit your Fallout4Prefs.ini (the proper one in your My Games\Fallout4, not the one in the game install directory) and you can change resolutions manually it's something like:

bBorderless=1
iSizeH=3840
iSizeW=2160

or whatever, you know how games work, you'll figure it out.

[Squidge]

what happens is every 5 minutes or so, the game alt tabs out on its own and its super annoying

[Death Approaches]

wow yea I bet. that's wild. that's nuts. have you done a google search, has anyone else had that? I don't know if making the window bigger will fix it, it'll look better being full-screen but it'll still probably do that.

Could it be a chat program pulling focus, your girl sending you whatsapp messages or something? Or is it really that regular, like 5 minutes exactly everytime?

[Squidge]

pretty much every 5 minutes. even when i have nothing open

[Squidge]

just tried setting the resolution to max in the PF. didnt change anything

[Death Approaches]

You did exit and restart, right? it's not a dynamic change, it's only read at startup. And just to be really really clear, you edited the one in My Documents\My Games\Fallout4 not the one in Steam\steamapps\common\Fallout4 ?

Because there's no way changing the resolution didn't make a difference. WAIT. Are you running full-screen?! You said "tried to fix it borderless window" (I fixed your typo). Does that mean you went back to fullscreen, that would explain why nothing happened. :-)

The relevant ones if you want to play borderless windowed would be:

bTopMostWindow=0
bMaximizeWindow=0
bBorderless=1
bFull Screen=0
iSize H=(your horizontal)
iSize W=(your vertical)

but again, I don't think this is the problem, something is else is up. What could be stealing focus? I did a quick google search for you, and yes this has been a problem for a very few people but it's been a problem since the game came out. It randomly alt-tabs back to the main desktop every 10 minutes or so.

Most people solve it by hitting Ctrl-Alt-Esc and getting the processes list up, and shutting down things that are running in the background that could be causing it. Everyone seems to have a different program at fault. Some have antivirus issues, another one had a msoffice task that was causing it. Be warned, some people find out they have a virus/trojan that's doing it, so I guess that's a possibility.

But there's hope if you want to troubleshoot versus stabbing blindly in the dark. Are you familar with AutoIt? https://www.autoitscript.com/site/autoit/ They have a au3spy tool that is meant for helping you automate windows tasks, but will tell you what window is stealing focus, and another company Adminscope specifically puts out a tool for this called, amazingly enough, Windows Focus Logger. http://www.adminscope.com/downloads/window-focus-logger-gui/

Doing that you'll know exactly what's going on and that'll tell you exactly what programs have to be stopped to prevent this. Good luck, this doesn't seem like it'll be a quick fix.

[Squidge]

thank you. ill try

[AimlessArrow]

In an old post on nVidia forum I read to rolling back for a previous driver would help. My game starts to "alttabbing" very recently so its either gpu- or win10- update bug.
Also I read in another post to turn off weapon particle-effect (whatever it is) may solve the issue.

[maskedman48]

This just happened to me and I fixed it on windows 10 by going into windows notification settings from the desktop and turning off every notification, and also going into focus assist and setting everything I could not turn off to priority only.

Hope this helps some of you out there. Seems this issue has a different cause for almost everyone.

[NamelessZ3RO]

The solution with the bbordeless worked kinda, i mean i can tab in but then i cant tab out, every time i try to get into steam or discord, the prio is on fallout and i cant open anything without seeing fallout first, i have to put it in different desktop to do anything and my fps goes all the way to 48fps and i always have 101fps is there any work around for that?

[vee-kay]

Bethesda games do not work well with ALT+TABbing, it is a waste of time trying to fight for it.

Just follow these tips:
* ignore your Discord, Steam profile and achievements for a while - why do you even need to ALT+TAB when playing a game anyway
* disable any screen overlay (especially Steam overlay)
* stick to fullscreen (either bordered or borderless, whichever works for you)
* don't bother with Fallout4Prefs.ini tweaks, as the primary settings can be done in Fallout4 Launcher, where you can select specify : Detail = Medium quality, Antialiasing =TAA, Anisotrophic Filtering = 4x (4 samples), Resolution (as supported by graphics card and monitor display), Windowed mode = off, Borderless = off (experiment with Windowed and Borderless settings; for me, changing them fixed the issue)
* disable any ReShade and background apps (e.g., antimalware) temporarily

This ought to fix the flashing automatic ALT+TAB issue. This worked for me yesterday.
I was able to later change the settings to whatever I needed, and game still works fine.

Edit; It is also recommended to use Autohotkey or similar scripting tool to create a little script that when run will disable the Windows button, Alt+Tab and Win+Tab key combos when gaming. This will prevent accidentally hitting them while playing such Bethesda games. I use below AutoHotkey script (I named it as DisableWinKey.ahk and run it as a batch file to launch it and Steam; and I can toggle it off/on while inside a game, by pressing F11):

;#NoEnv ; Recommended for performance and compatibility with future AutoHotkey releases.
; #Warn ; Enable warnings to assist with detecting common errors.
;SendMode Input ; Recommended for new scripts due to its superior speed and reliability.
;SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir% ; Ensures a consistent starting directory.

; Disable Alt+Tab
;!Tab::Return

; Disable Win+Tab
#Tab::Return

; Disable LWin
LWin::Return

; Disable RWin
RWin::Return

; Toggle Script (so that you can tab out if you want)
;f11::

Pause

Suspend

return

[RabbitRidge]

Old thread, but Alt+Tab is designed to switch between open Windows. I like an application like Notepad for switching, which I use to track planned objectives and reminders of things not to forget from previous play.

[vee-kay]

Originally posted by RabbitRidge:

Old thread, but Alt+Tab is designed to switch between open Windows. I like an application like Notepad for switching, which I use to track planned objectives and reminders of things not to forget from previous play.

Agreed, but Bethesda doesn't agree. Otherwise its games wouldn't be notorious for ALT+TAB issues.

There's even a Steam forum thread on this exact topic:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/377160/discussions/0/2579854400752474510/

Here are some more threads, first one being an official response from Bethesda Support that ALT+TAB is a known issue in Morrowind.

https://help.bethesda.net/#en/answer/52842

https://www.reddit.com/r/BethesdaSoftworks/comments/w7qdyc/what_is_bethesdas_issue_with_alttabbing/

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1wkuqe/when_i_alttab_in_a_bethesda_game/

https://steamcommunity.com/app/377160/discussions/0/1743391629748259305/

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/615805-the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/60977154

https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/y9zqe6/i_learned_the_hard_way_not_to_alttab_out_of/

https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/khzl6o/any_way_to_fix_the_issue_where_alt_tab_sometimes/

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/m87b8/alt_tab_not_working/

TLDR: Stop ALT+TABing in Bethesda games. It's a bad idea.

[RabbitRidge]

I don't have any problems, it's not worth arguing.

[vee-kay]

There is a mod called OneTweak, available for Skyrim and Fallout New Vegas, which (at least for Skyrim, in my experience) really fixes the ALT+TAB issue for the game. (Skyrim SSE has an an equivalent mod callled SSE Display Tweaks.)

Someone ought to make a similar fix mod for Fallout 4 please.