It’s a pity Windows doesn’t have such a native feature, but we can at least add hot corners to it manually. Both WinXCorners and Hot Corners are third-party software packages that replicate the hot corners from macOS onto your Windows system.
How to Add Hot Corners to Windows With WinXCorners
WinXCorners is a free app compatible with Windows 10 and 11. The software includes six default actions you can apply to the corners of the screen, and the 1.2b version of this software lets you set up custom commands.
WinXCorners 1.2b downloads as a 7z archive. So, you’ll need an extraction utility, such as 7-Zip, to open up the program’s archive. If you have no programs that can extract 7z folders, open the 7-Zip website and grab the app before you continue.
Once done, you can add hot corners to Windows 11 by downloading WinXCorners and extracting it with 7-Zip like this:
Open the WinXCorners website and click the WinXCorners 1. 2b download link on that webpage. Open the 7-Zip extraction utility. Select the WinXCorners_1. 2b archive in 7-Zip. Click Extract to bring up the window shown directly below. Press the ellipses button. Choose a folder to include an extracted WinXCorners_1. 2b directory in, and press OK to select it. Click OK in the Extract window. Open the extracted WinXCorners_1. 2b folder. Double-click WinXCorners. exe to run the software. If the software is disabled, click the Temporarily disabled toggle switch in WinXCorners to enable the hot corners.
Once it’s running you can choose screen corner actions by clicking the drop-down menus to select options for them. You can assign most of the default actions available to the four corners. These are the default actions you can select from:
Hide Windows: Minimizes windows behind the active one. Desktop: Brings up the desktop. Smart Screen Saver: Activates your selected screen saver. Action Center: Opens the Action Center in Windows. All Windows: Brings up Task View that displays all window thumbnails. Monitors off: Turns the display blank (you can reactivate it by clicking).
Once you’ve selected your actions, move your mouse’s pointer to the top, bottom, left, and right screen corners. Moving the cursor to each corner will trigger whatever action you assigned to it, so long as WinXCorners is running in the background.
To configure WinXCorners to automatically start on boot, right-click its system tray icon and select Start with Windows.
You can also set hot corners to open desktop software, which will let you open a program by moving the cursor to a corner. To do this, you’ll need to set WinXCorners to open a program via its Advanced Options window as follows:
First, select the Custom Command option for a corner on one of WinXCorners’ drop-down menus. Right-click the WinXCorners system tray icon and select Advanced. Select the Enable custom command box in the Advanced Options window. Paste in a path to a program’s EXE file in the Custom Command box, and click the OK button.
Now the program will open whenever you move the cursor over the chosen corner.
How to Add Hot Corners With the Hot Corners Software
Hot Corners is an alternative to WinXCorners that works much the same. However, this program has some different actions you can set for screen corners.
Hot Corners is a very lightweight app you can utilize on most Windows platforms. Here is how you can add hot corners to Windows 11 with the Hot Corners software:
Click Download Now on Hot Corners’ Softpedia page. Select Download: Softpedia Mirror (US) for the server location. Open the file management app by pressing Win + E. Navigate to the directory that contains the installer for Hot Corners. Right-click HC-2-2-0. exe and select Run as administrator. Click Next and Yes to accept the copyright agreement. Select the Run Hot Corners after installation is complete setting and press Next. Follow the instructions until the end.
Hot Corners includes nine action options to select from. For example, you can set actions to open system locations like Control Panel and My Documents, or you can set a corner to lock your PC ot put it on standby.
If you select Search Google, moving the cursor over a corner will bring up a small search box. Typing a keyword in that box will bring up Google search results for it in your default browser.
You can also set each corner to open different programs with Hot Corners. To set a program for one corner, click the drop-down menu for it and select Run. Click the ellipses button in the Run window, and select a program. Then select OK on all windows.
You’ll notice Hot Corners includes a Mouse Move tab. This feature is supposed to enable users to activate actions by moving the mouse up, down, left, and right. However, that feature has a Win + X activation hotkey, which conflicts with Windows 11’s Power User menu. Therefore, that feature only works in Windows platforms that don’t have Power User menus, such as Vista and 7.
Also, note that Hot Corners doesn’t save settings when you don’t run it as an administrator. So, make sure you always run the software with elevated permissions. The best thing to do is to set the program to always run as an administrator via its Compatibility tab like this:
Open the installation folder for Hot Corners. Right-click the Hot Corners. exe file and select Properties. Click Compatibility on the Hot Corners Properties window. Select Run this program as administrator and click the Apply (save) button.
Now Hot Corners should always run with elevated permissions. To add the program to your startup items, click Options > Settings in Hot Corners. Select the Run on Start-up checkbox, and click OK on the Settings window.
Hot Corners Adds New Functionality to Windows 11
So, now you can utilize one of the best macOS features in Windows 11 with WinXCorners and Hot Corners. The hot corners feature those software packages enable gives you a new way to trigger common actions and open programs in Windows.
