How to Set a Program to Always Open Maximized

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I’ll bet this sounds familliar - you made the size of your program window slightly smaller, and now your program just insists on starting up in that same small window!

Here’s a 2 step process to force it to always open in a maximized state.

  1. Right-click the program shortcut or the start menu item and select ‘Properties’
  2. Under the ‘Run’ Menu - select maximized

That’s it!  Your program will always open in a maximized state.  Alternatively, you can of course select ‘minimized’ to have the opposite effect.

window maximized

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    • 10 Responses to 'How to Set a Program to Always Open Maximized'

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    1. Denis said,

      on February 22nd, 2007 at 10:48 pm

      You forgot to add that after you right-click the icon or shortcut, you must then choose “properties.”

    2. James Yeang said,

      on February 23rd, 2007 at 3:00 am

      Thanks Dennis - I’ve updated the post!

    3. didi said,

      on February 23rd, 2007 at 10:32 am

      simple trick but useful

    4. joe said,

      on March 19th, 2007 at 12:50 am

      Does not seem to work with Outlook

    5. James Yeang said,

      on March 19th, 2007 at 12:57 am

      Joe : It should… do you get the screen where it allows you to select Normal/Minimized/Maximized like described in the post?

    6. joe said,

      on March 20th, 2007 at 3:40 am

      James, thanks so much! It works!

    7. Jerry said,

      on October 25th, 2007 at 8:48 am

      How do I get “Google” to open up in a STANDARD size window every time? XP Home.

    8. James Yeang said,

      on October 26th, 2007 at 6:56 pm

      @Jerry: just open your browser as maximized…. that should do the trick

    9. Jeramey said,

      on December 31st, 2007 at 5:34 am

      This solution works great if you are using a shortcut. My problem is that I have a program that updates files, then runs my game. My game is what I would like to run maximized. The program that preforms the updates has a place for me to enter a Additional Arguments (IE: -opengl). Is there such a command I can enter?

    10. James Yeang said,

      on December 31st, 2007 at 8:42 am

      @Jeramey: Try making a shortcut to the program, if not then I guess it depends on the program on whether it can run maximized

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