Tiny Hot Corners for Windows 10

Martin Brinkmann
Dec 27, 2016
Updated • Jul 5, 2017
Software, Windows 10
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Tiny Hot Corners for Windows 10 is a free lightweight program for Windows 10 that brings GNOME's hot corner functionality to Windows.

The author of the program Tavis Ormandy, whom you may know from his security research on various Windows programs, missed the hot corner functionality of GNOME whenever he worked on a device running Windows 10.

He did some research on the topic, but noticed rather quickly that none of the existing solutions offered what he was looking for. All used lots of resources or were overblown according to him.

That's when he made the decision to create a tiny tool to bring the hot corners functionality to Windows 10.

Tiny Hot Corners for Windows 10

tiny hot corners

The program is a portable application. You can download it from the project's GitHub page, or make it yourself instead if you prefer that. The latter provides you with the opportunity to modify build parameters such as the coordinates of the hot zone, modifier keywords you want to add to the process. or the delay before the function is activated.

The program itself works identical to Windows-Tab on Windows 10. Windows-Tab displays all open program windows -- and polls for changes regularly to display them -- and a list of all desktops as well on the screen.

So, ideally, it takes a click to switch to any window that is displayed there. You can create new virtual desktops from the interface as well.

Tiny Hot Corners for Windows 10 runs silently in the background. It uses about 4 Megabytes of RAM when it is running, and virtually no computer resources other than that.

It is ideal obviously for users who work on devices with GNOME and on Windows 10. Some users may like the functionality that it provides even if they don't use GNOME at all.

You may want to consider adding the hot corners program to the startup folder of the operating system. Simply select the hotcorner.exe file and press Ctrl-C to Copy it. Then use File Explorer to switch to %USERPROFILE%\Start Menu\Programs\Startup, right-click in the folder and select Paste from the context menu.

If you don't do that, you need to run it each time Windows starts.

Closing Words

Tiny Hot Corners for Windows 10 is a lightweight program for the operating system. The program's source code is available, and its binary is portable.

Its use depends largely on whether you find the functionality that it adds useful, or not.  I for one prefer good old Alt-Tab instead to cycle quickly through all open program windows, or click on programs in the taskbar instead.

Note that I have not tested the program on older versions of Windows. If you do, let me know how that went.

An alternative is Better Desktop Tool which should work on all versions of Windows.

Now You: Would you use a program like Tiny Hot Corners for Windows 10?

Summary
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5 based on 10 votes
Software Name
Tiny Hot Corners for Windows 10
Operating System
Windows
Software Category
Productivity
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Comments

  1. chesscanoe said on December 28, 2016 at 1:23 pm
    Reply

    I only use Windows, and for me it’s far more useful to learn all its keyboard shortcuts, or at least have them readily available per
    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12445/windows-keyboard-shortcuts

  2. Heimen Stoffels said on December 28, 2016 at 10:42 am
    Reply

    Enlightenment E17 (and KDE also IIRC) had this feature long before GNOME so it’s not “GNOME’s hot corner functionality”.

  3. Jeff said on December 28, 2016 at 4:40 am
    Reply

    What is Gnome’s Hot corners functionality – how are Windows users supposed to know it? Why isn’t this explained in the article?

  4. SCBright said on December 27, 2016 at 6:20 pm
    Reply

    Interesting and, perhaps useful for someone.
    But it’s the same as clicking the Windows task view, it’s just a link to an existing function.

  5. Ross Presser said on December 27, 2016 at 6:15 pm
    Reply

    Unfortunately the binary for hotcorners.exe is being flagged as “malicious”. There’s discussion on the github project discussions page.
    https://github.com/taviso/hotcorner/issues/5

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on December 27, 2016 at 6:18 pm
      Reply

      These are false positives, but still a big nuisance.

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