Troubleshooting

Fixes and explanations for Chromium F11, the taskbar, the fullscreen blink, and the SmartScreen warning.

The honest rough edges, and what to do about each.

Chrome or Edge F11 won’t stay in a zone

Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge) re-assert full-monitor bounds indefinitely when they enter F11 or HTML5 fullscreen, and they block the in-process workaround VirtualZones uses for other apps.

Fix: maximize the browser window instead of using F11. Maximized Chromium windows confine correctly. Firefox F11 works (after a brief tug-of-war before it settles).

A window spans the whole monitor over the taskbar

By default zones respect the taskbar (they fill the work area). If you enabled Cover taskbar, confined windows span the full monitor — but the taskbar is a topmost window and still draws over the bottom strip unless you set it to auto-hide in Windows settings.

Fix: either turn off Cover taskbar, or set the Windows taskbar to auto-hide.

A brief flash when an app goes fullscreen

VirtualZones resizes a window just after it goes fullscreen, so a single ~16 ms frame can flash at full size before it snaps into its zone. The maximize animation is suppressed while active to hide this for maximize; F11 may still flash one frame.

This is cosmetic — the window ends up correctly confined.

“Windows protected your PC”

This is Microsoft Defender SmartScreen, shown for any unsigned or low-reputation app — not specific to VirtualZones. Click More info → Run anyway, or install via the Microsoft Store (coming soon) to avoid it entirely.

Exclusive-fullscreen games aren’t confined

Exclusive-fullscreen DirectX games bypass the desktop compositor entirely, so they can’t be confined. Many games offer a borderless windowed mode — use that, and it confines like any other window.