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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13 Comments For This Post

  1. Denis Says:

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

  2. James Yeang Says:

    Thanks Dennis - I’ve updated the post!

  3. didi Says:

    simple trick but useful

  4. joe Says:

    Does not seem to work with Outlook

  5. James Yeang Says:

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

  6. joe Says:

    James, thanks so much! It works!

  7. Jerry Says:

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

  8. James Yeang Says:

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

  9. Jeramey Says:

    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 Says:

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

  11. Anonymous Says:

    There is such a command, it would be entered in the program name line within it’s properties, just need to find a glossary of available commands and syntax

  12. Jerry Manley Says:

    None of my shortcuts have the
    Normal/Minimized/Maximized available under Properties or anywhere else..

  13. Knothole Says:

    All these “open and then close” solutions work only if you have a browser open when you click on a link. For example, if I do not have I.E. (or other)browser open, and I click on my Google tray-icon, it will open minimized, but if IE is open (maximized), and I click on it, it will open maximized. If it doesn’t, the “open and then close” routine will work . . until I exit IE . . then it won’t work anymore. So how do I get Google to open maximized without having to have a browser open???

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