How to fix PowerToys FancyZones in Windows 11?

2 min read.

This article explains how to fix an issue where FancyZones (from the fantastic Windows PowerToys toolset) fails to work because it conflicts with the built-in window management in Windows 11.

I guess it’s too much to ask for a level of coordination here from Microsoft… Oh well.

Anyway – I had a situation where the clunky out-of-the-box functionality interfered with the measured and elegant approach of FancyZones, intercepting my window placements with keyboard shortcuts (win+left and win+right), and occasionally also trying to shove a nifty but apparently unreliable “snap deck” on top of the window.

Don’t get me wrong – I like new features. I just dislike it when they interfere with older, more complete and stabler features that I’m already using.

But I digress. Here’s how to fix it.

Solution

Long story short – if you want to use a simple admin UI (like so often in Windows), you can fire up your regedit and navigate to the following key:

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

Create a new key under it, name it “EnableSnapAssistFlyout“, of type DWORD and set the value to 0.

Or if you don’t like to use the well-refined easy-to-use admin UI (regedit) in Windows, you can also use this simple PowerShell function below:

function RegistryKeyChangeDWORD($RegistryPath, $Name, $Value) {
    # Check all parameters are provided and output which one is missing
    If (-NOT $RegistryPath) { Write-Host "RegistryPath is missing"; Return }
    If (-NOT $Name) { Write-Host "Name is missing"; Return }
    If (-NOT $Value) { Write-Host "Value is missing"; Return }

    # Create the key if it does not exist
    If (-NOT (Test-Path $RegistryPath)) {
        New-Item -Path $RegistryPath -Force | Out-Null
    }
    # Now set the value
    New-ItemProperty -Path $RegistryPath -Name $Name -Value $Value -PropertyType DWORD -Force
}

And with that little snippet entered in PowerShell, you can then do this:

RegistryKeyChangeDWORD 'HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced' 'EnableSnapAssistFlyout' '0'

And thus we’ve solved another issue we never should’ve had in the first place :)

Author
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Antti K. Koskela

Developer / Speaker / Consultant at Koskila / Precio Fishbone / Norppandalotti Software Co / Alter - Experience Ideas Ltd

Antti Koskela is a proud digital native nomadic millennial full stack developer (is that enough funny buzzwords? That's definitely enough funny buzzwords!), who works as Solutions Architect for Precio Fishbone, building delightful Digital Workplaces.

He's been a developer from 2004 (starting with PHP and Java), and he's been working on .NET projects, Azure, Office 365, SharePoint and a lot of other stuff. He's also Microsoft MVP for Azure.

This is his personal professional (e.g. professional, but definitely personal) blog.

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