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Recently, I have been playing around with virtual desktops in Windows 10 and was surprised by the following behaviour:

I have a folder lying on my desktop. On virtual desktop 1, I open the folder (double click). Now I switch to virtual desktop 2 and open it again. I would expect a second file explorer to be opened, one on each virtual desktop. Instead, Windows automatically switches back to virtual desktop 1 and focuses the existing explorer.

Is this a bug or the intended behaviour? Is there a way to avoid it, e.g. some setting to make virtual desktops to be "more separate" than per default?

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  • This is intended behavior. I haven't played much with it, but I believe it can be turned off. Given that I'm not sure about the turning off part and how, this is a comment, not an answer. I did read however that this is how virtual desktops work in windows 10. They want to make sure that people are not losing track of their windows.
    – LPChip
    Aug 6, 2015 at 14:06
  • Great question. This is very bad functionality when you want separate desktops.
    – JoelC
    Aug 6, 2015 at 16:39

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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It appears this can be worked around by going to File -> Change folder and search options -> View and checking the option to Launch folder windows in a separate process.

This option has been in Windows a long time, and it comes with its own set of fairly subtle side effects (if I recall correctly).

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    Do you remember any of said side side effects? The only thing I found online is higher memory consumption (which is not an issue on my machine).
    – Sebastian Negraszus
    Aug 7, 2015 at 9:23
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    After playing with it a bit, I think the memory is probably the only issue. I believe (maybe in Windows XP) it would keep opening new Explorer instances when you would double click a folder in Explorer. This was quite annoying, but appears to not happen anymore or perhaps I'm thinking of another setting.
    – JoelC
    Aug 7, 2015 at 12:49
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    I don't know about Windows XP, but in Windows 10 that behaviour is governed by a dedicated setting in Folder Options / General / Browse Folders.
    – Sebastian Negraszus
    Aug 7, 2015 at 13:03
  • @SebastianNegraszus, if you have that option turned off, you can still open a folder in a new process by holding Shift and left-clicking to get the context menu. Open in new process will become available.
    – Fauxcuss
    Jan 20, 2023 at 0:04

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