How do I keep a small Audacity window from minimizing when hitting the play button on a YouTube or other? Thankyou
All the control keys and hotkeys are shared between programs. The one on top gets them, so you can’t have two programs on top. Why did you want this?
Koz
Sounds like you are saying it can’t be done? I don’t quite understand. I put songs on Audacity usually via You Tube to learn them. I open Aud. then start the song which causes the Aud. window to mimimize. It’s inconvenient. It would be nice to have the Aud. win. always on top. That way if there is a false start to the song you just go over to the small Aud. win. and pause or stop. It would save a lot of back and forth clicking.
Windows does not have a built-in way to make a window on top.
Have you tried tiling windows side-by-side or vertically? Minimise all windows you don’t want to tile, then right-click over empty space in the Taskbar and choose the “Show” or “Tile” option.
In Windows 7 (but not Windows 8), you can instead open Task Manager then CTRL-click to multiple select the windows you want to tile like this:
Or search online for a window manager program to keep individual windows on top.
Gale
Here is from Always on Top: Keep Any Window Visible Always:
Say you are checking your emails in Google Chrome and simultaneously watching a YouTube videos in VLC on your small screen laptop. The problem is that if you switch to the browser, the media player window moves to the background and vice-versa.
If you would like to prevent that video window from hiding even while you bring the browser to the foreground, you may download “Always on Top” – a free utility that will “stick” any program window to the foreground of your desktop with a simple keyboard shortcut.
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To get started, download the Always On Top utility from > labnol.org > (<200k) and run it. Then select the window you like to keep on top and press the Ctrl+Space shortcut to stick that window in the front.
You no longer have to worry about arranging windows side-by-side to copy-paste information from one window to another. If you like to disable sticking and restore the default window behavior, just press the same Ctrl+Space shortcut again.
One of my clients has a similar request. The underlying windows managing library - wxWidgets - has a switch: wxSTAY_ON_TOP which you can use on any window. I have not tried it but it would not surprise me that if you used it on the Audacity parent window it might have the effect desired. The downside is that this would require compiling a custom version for this case.
[Edit] Sorry, this does work but forces Audacity to be maximized thus covering all other windows – not what you want.