Active window highlight??

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Dunno how the heck I turned it on, but how can I turn OFF the dimming of all the windows except for the active window?

Chuck Billow

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HP Command Center, System Control, Focus Mode.

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I don’t believe I have the Command Center.  Microsoft Store?  I went to download it but was denied access.

Chuck Billow

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Settings App – find “Focus”

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CWBillow wrote:

I don’t believe I have the Command Center.

The HP Command Center comes preinstalled on most HP computers!

The actual program is HpccLauncher.exe and, on my HP Laptop, pressing F12 opens it.

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FYI, Focus Mode is a new AI driven display mode HP introduced in some of their new HP Spectre and Envy notebooks using Intel 11th Gen CPUs, Iris Xe graphics, and Evo platform verification.

HP launches new laptops with Intel ‘Tiger Lake’ 11th Generation Processors and Xe Graphics

That means Focus Mode isn’t available unless it’s one of their new models (i.e it’s not available on my 4 year old HP laptop.)

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Everything is turned off there, but the active window is still a good deal brighter and other windows are dimmed.

Chuck Billow

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Is it an HP computer?

Windows 11: Turn off dim on non-focused windows. “Focus Mode” is an HP setting not Windows.

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PKCano

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The HP site talks about Focus mode being one to keep one’s attention at a certain point.

It doesn’t appear to address the issue I raised.  At least not in a way to turn OFF making a window brighter than others.

Chuck Billow

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It seems what I need is the HP Command Center.  This appears to be something not readily available.

When I talked to HP they transferred me to Premium support and they wanted to charge me for the assistance!

It’s not like the laptop is even 1 month old as yet!

Chuck Billow

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CWBillow wrote:

It seems what I need is the HP Command Center. This appears to be something not readily available.

Unless I’m missing something, it appears to be available in the Microsoft Store.

You can download the HP command center from the Microsoft Store:

https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9P92N00QV14J

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CWBillow wrote:

The HP site talks about Focus mode being one to keep one’s attention at a certain point.

It doesn’t appear to address the issue I raised.  At least not in a way to turn OFF making a window brighter than others.

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If I right-click on the notifications icon in the tray, Focus Assist is showing as “Off”, but I still have the one window I am working in highlighted and the others dimmed — “Focus Assist”?

How the heck do I get rid of this highlighting?  It ain’t assisting, it IS distracting.

Chuck Billow

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CWBillow wrote:

If I right-click on the notifications icon in the tray, Focus Assist is showing as “Off”, but I still have the one window I am working in highlighted and the others dimmed — “Focus Assist”?

No. Windows doesn’t dim windows.

CWBillow wrote:

How the heck do I get rid of this highlighting? It ain’t assisting, it IS distracting.

Why can’t you find or get HP Command Center?

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I found and installed it, but, being a bit slow, I don’t see where I can disable the active-window highlighting.

Chuck Billow

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System Control in the middle of the right-hand screen.

 

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Found it, and it is off, but the darn highlighting persists.

Chuck Billow

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I’d be happy to reinstall Windows 11 if I could be sure that Focus Assist would NOT be there.

It is showing as turned OFF, but the active windows still highlights while all others go dim.

Is there a way to turn OFF the dimming?  What happened to the active window title COLOR served this purpose?

If I do reinstall, how do I block Focus Assist completely?

Chuck Billow

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Where exactly do you see “Focus Assist”?

Windows 11 hasn’t used that term for a couple of years.

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On the System Control screen of the HP Command Center.

Chuck Billow

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That’s “Focus Mode”.

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Are you sure you still have Windows 11?

It sounds like Windows 10, which has Focus Assist, but still doesn’t dim windows.

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If I used the wrong term, apologies, but winver tells me Windows 11 23H2.

What I can tell you is that Focus Mode is still active and irritating as the devil.

Chuck Billow

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HP Link

You might be able to temporarily disable Focus Mode in task manager by stopping HP.FocusMode

Win 11 home - 24H2
Attitude is a choice...Choose wisely

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b

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You indicated you couldn’t access the HP Command Center until you found and installed it.

Since Focus Mode came up as OFF, that likely means that’s it’s default setting and whatever you did that turned it on without using the Command Center is still set to ON.

Suggest you toggle it ON and then back OFF and see if that helps.

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b

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I’m guessing the process is run at startup rather than ‘always on’, whether just for ‘logged on user’ or ‘all users’.

Perhaps download/unblock/run (using the right-click option to Run as administrator) the small, free, portable Sysinternals/Technet Autoruns tool then do a search for Focus?

This should show the process (which I believe is HP.FocusMode.exe), allowing you to disable it (by removing the tick mark against its checkbox) OR delete its startup entry completely by selecting it and using CTRL+D (or right-clicking on the process then clicking Delete).

Alternatively, a kludge is just to kill the process, perhaps using the following in a .BAT file:

TASKKILL /F /IM HP.FocusMode.exe

(which you could add to your startup folder)

Hope this helps…

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@CWBillow (Chuck)-

At this point I have to ask again…is this symptom of the (excessive) window brightness occurring on the laptop that you have rented while yours is being fixed??

Other symptoms you’ve reported in other threads in the last couple of weeks have been on the rented laptop, so is THIS symptom also occurring on the same rented laptop??

 

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mledman

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Bob, no, it was a setting, and of course now I cannot find the post showing me how to (finally) get it off!  When I do I’ll pass it on.

Chuck Billow

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@CWBillow

You’ve indicated your non-active windows are dimmed and it’s not being controlled by HP’s Focus mode.

Windows 11 does not have such a feature so can you please attach a screenshot showing the dimmed Windows so we can actually see the effect.

I ask because Windows 11 does have a feature that blurs non-active Windows and I wonder if maybe that’s what you enabled?

Also, you indicated at the start of this thread the HP Command Center wasn’t installed on your laptop (you have to find and install it) but that particular S/W has come preinstalled on all HP laptops for a LOT of years (i.e. my old 2009 HP 6910p came with it.)

So, if it wasn’t on your laptop, that begs the question, is it actually an HP laptop?

• If not, that would explain why HP’s Focus mode has no effect.

• If so, exactly what make/model?

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n0ads wrote:

If not, that would explain why HP’s Focus mode has no effect.

I’m not sure you can install HP Command Centre on a non-HP laptop.

I tried (just to see what, if any, registry changes toggling Focus Mode made) but the install errored out:

(Other installs and updates using WinGet both before and after were fine.)

I could easily be wrong but I assumed the installer checked for the existence of specific HP-supported hardware, most likely the CPU.

Hope this helps…

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satrow

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It can definitively be installed on a non-HP laptop, I just installed it on my Dell Laptop using the MS Store link https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9P92N00QV14J.

However, there’s two problems with doing that:

1- As I pointed out in an above post, Focus mode requires an Intel 11th Gen CPU with Iris Xe graphics.

2- Without HP BIOS it won’t run.

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satrow

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