Windows 11 24H2 breaks popular Alt + Tab shortcut. Here’s what you can do

There are a few keyboard shortcuts on Windows computers that nearly everyone knows: Ctrl + C to copy, Ctrl + V to paste, maybe even Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open the Task Manager, Ctrl + Alt + Delete to bring up the special login options menu, and Alt + Tab to switch windows.

But if you use Alt + Tab a lot, you might have run into an annoying bug after updating to Windows 11 24H2 where the Alt + Tab keyboard shortcut results in freezes or an empty black screen.

As reported by Windows Latest, this isn’t an isolated incident. Users on Reddit and the Windows support forum have been dealing with this for weeks now. If it results in a black screen, it’ll last for about 10 seconds before finally doing what it’s meant to do.

The problem is that Alt + Tab is meant to be a time-saving shortcut, so this massive delay is completely unacceptable.

What to do if you’re affected

Microsoft is aware of the problem but hasn’t yet offered a solution yet, instead promising a patch for December 2024.

Given that this is happening on machines that have updated to Windows 11 24H2, the best course of action if you rely on Alt + Tab all day every day is to postpone updating until this issue is fixed.

But if you’ve already updated to Windows 11 24H2, you have two potential ways forward.

First, you can try switching off Game Mode, which apparently suffices as a temporary workaround for some users. To do this, navigate to Settings, select Gaming in the left-side panel, then select Game Mode. Toggle the Game Mode setting to Off and see if that fixes the issue.

Otherwise, if it’s disruptive enough, you might consider reverting to a previous version of Windows 11. That might be overkill for just the Alt + Tab problem, but it’s worth looking into if you’re also experience other issues in Windows 11 24H2, like network connectivity failures.

Further reading: Everything to know about Windows 11 24H2