Speed Up Aero Peek in Windows 7

Windows 7 has brought many eye candy features with it. One of them is Aero Peek using which you can preview your Windows desktop without actually closing or minimizing any open window. Just hover your mouse in the lower right corner of your screen for about 500 milliseconds and you would be shown a preview of the Windows desktop. But if you cannot wait for 500 milliseconds (that is half a second), then you can increase (or decrease) this time using a registry hack. Here is how :

  1. Press the keyboard combination Windows logo key + R to open the Run dialog. In the Run dialog, type regedit.exe and press Enter to start the Windows Registry Editor.

    Speed up Windows Aero Peek

  2. In the Registry Editor, navigate to the following key :
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

    Speed up Windows Aero Peek

  3. Right click anywhere in the right side pane and select New → DWORD (32-bit) Value as shown.

    Speed up Windows Aero Peek

  4. Give the newly created DWORD value a name of DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime and set its value to the number of milliseconds you want to wait before Aero Peek shows the desktop preview. By default, this time is 500 milliseconds. But you can change it to a shorter or longer duration of time.

    Speed up Windows Aero Peek

  5. Close Registry Editor and log off from Windows. Then log on again for the changes to take effect. You can also restart your computer to let Windows reload the settings from the Registry.