How to Move a Lost, Off-Screen Window Back to Your Desktop (2024)

If you've ever had a window somehow get moved off your screen, you know it can be frustrating not being able to drag it back. We've got a couple of ways you can move these rogue windows back to your desktop, though.

How Did a Window Get Moved Off Screen?

This little problem can happen for a couple of different reasons. The most common is if you have a secondary monitor that is sometimes hooked up and sometimes not — something that's pretty common for laptop users. Sometimes, if you disconnect the secondary monitor without turning off the "extend desktop" setting in Windows or moving your windows back to your main monitor first, windows that were on the second monitor can get stranded. This can even happen with the new, more multi-monitor-friendly settings in Windows 10 and Windows 11. This off-screen window problem can also happen sometimes if an app moves a window off screen and doesn't move it back. But we have a couple of tricks that can help.

The easiest way to get back a hidden window is to just right-click on the Taskbar and select one of the window arrangement settings, like "Cascade windows" or "Show windows stacked."

The "Cascade windows" setting, for example, will immediately arrange all open windows in a cascade, moving all windows back onto the main screen in the process.

Get Hidden Windows Back with a Keyboard Trick on Windows 10 or Windows 11

Windows 11 made a number of changes to the user interface, and the taskbar was one of the features that saw the most changes. Windows 11 has none of the taskbar right-click options Windows 10 does, except for "Taskbar Settings." That takes any of the above window positioning options in the right-click menu — like "Cascade Windows" — off the table entirely. However, there are other tricks you can use.

Snap a Missing Window to the Side of Your Screen with a Hotkey

You can snap a Window to one side of your screen or the other using hotkeys. Select the window by clicking the icon on the taskbar or by hitting Alt+Tab until it is selected.

Then you need to actually snap the Window to one side of the screen. Hold the Windows key, and then hit the Left or Right Arrow Key. For example, you'd hold Windows+Left Arrow Key to snap the missing window to the left-hand side of your screen.

Then just left-click and hold the title bar of the window and drag it wherever you'd like it.

Moving a Missing Window with the Keyboard

There's also a simple keyboard trick you can use if you don't want to rearrange all your windows. First make sure you've got the off-screen window selected as the active window. You can do this by pressing Alt+Tab until that window is active or clicking the associated taskbar button.

After you've got the window active, Shift+Right-Click the taskbar button (because just right-clicking will open the app's jumplist instead) and choose the "Move" command from the context menu.

At this point, note that your cursor changes to a "Move" cursor. Now, you can use your arrow keys to move the window. You should also just be able to tap any of the arrow keys and then move your mouse slightly to have the window pop back onto the screen.

This trick will work on any version of Windows, but note that on versions before Windows 7 you just need to right-click the taskbar button instead of Shift+Right-Click to get the context menu. It's a handy little trick for solving a somewhat rare — but definitely frustrating — problem.

How to Move a Window That Is Off Screen with WinLister

Besides the options built into Windows, you can also use third-party utilities to move a missing window. We're going to use WinLister by NirSoft, since it is lightweight, effective, and NirSoft has a great reputation.

First, unzip the contents of the download somewhere — it doesn't really matter where, since WinLister doesn't need to be installed to work — then run the ".exe" file. You'll see a window like this:

Right-click the window that has gone missing, select "Center Selected Windows," and confirm that you want to center the window.

The application will jump to the middle of your primary display. Once the window is positioned there it should reopen there every time the application is launched until you move it manually again.