How to disable auto dismiss for Action Center on Windows 10
When you open the Action Center, you’re free to interact with its various components i.e., the notifications or the quick action toggles. When you click outside the Action Center, it automatically dismisses itself. For most users, this is preferred behavior. The Action Center doesn’t need to stick around unnecessarily however, if you prefer that it doesn’t dismiss when you click outside it, you can disable the auto dismiss for Action Center with a registry edit.
Disable auto dismiss Action Center
You need admin rights to edit the windows registry. Use the Win+R keyboard to open the run box. Type ‘regedit’ and tap Enter. This will open the registry editor.
Go to the following location;
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ImmersiveShell\Launcher
Right-click the Launcher key and select New>DWORD (32-bit) Value. Name this value DisableLightDismiss. Once you’ve added it, double-click it and enter 1 in the value box. Click OK, and exit the registry editor.
The change should take effect right away but if it doesn’t, restart File Explorer and it should work.
Once you’ve made the change, the Action Center will only open and close when you click the button in the system tray. Clicking outside the Action Center will no longer close it.
If you ever want to revert the change, you can do one of two things. You can delete the DWORD value that you added, or you can set its value to 0. Again, if the change doesn’t take effect, restart File Explorer.
This isn’t exactly a built-in feature on Windows 10. A lot of things that Microsoft has removed from the OS can still be tinkered with via the registry. This is something like that so it isn’t foolproof. It is possible that the Action Center or the Start Menu start acting up after this and if it does, you should remove the DWORD value that you added. Changing its value to 0 won’t be enough.
We should also mention that Windows 10 has a bug where, when you click the Action Center button, it opens on the left side of the screen for a brief moment before jumping back to the right side. If you experience this bug, the DWORD value shouldn’t make it any worse. In fact, in my personal experience, it made the bug go away. That said, if the registry edit creates more problems for you, you should hold off on using this trick until the next major Windows 10 update arrives in April this year. It fixes this problem and you’ll be able to use this trick without worry.
