TopMost

Working with a single monitor can be quite a challenge, especially if you have to deal with a lot of active windows. Resizing might be an option, but you might need particular instances to stay on top of everything else. In this regard, TopMost wants to help with window management for more comfort in your tasks.

You first need to go through a setup process to make the application work. On the other hand, it doesn’t make any changes to system registry entries, so you can just as well deploy it on a thumb drive to use on other computers. Note, however, that .NET Framework is required to run the program, and even go through the installer.

The application stays in the tray area during runtime. However, it would have been useful to see a context menu integration to apply the topmost attribute to windows directly from the title bar. The program uses a different approach though, and you need to rely on the tray menu to set this attribute to the window of interest.

It doesn’t really matter whether you run the application before or after activating windows of interest, because it cleverly detects them. All active windows are enlisted in the tray menu, and selecting an item instantly brings it to the front layer. This can be done with more windows at a time, but selected items don’t really have a priority, and are brought to front based on focus.

Sure enough using the tray menu to apply this attribute doesn’t require a lot of effort. Sadly, there’s no hotkey support to quickly toggle the attribute on the selected window, or any possibility to manage layer priority for selected instances.

Bottom line is that having a windows in the front layer can create less frustration when dealing with a crowded desktop. TopMost aims to make this happen comfortably, but it does so in a straightforward manner, with no quick method of applying the attribute, or managing window layers.