The Window Dragging Effect
In Windows 10, when you click on the title bar of an application and drag it across your screen, you can see the entire window—text, images, and buttons—moving in real-time along with your mouse cursor. This behavior is controlled by the “Show window contents while dragging” setting. It provides immediate visual feedback, allowing you to accurately position a window exactly where you want it relative to other applications on your desktop.
However, forcing the graphics processor to constantly redraw a complex, fully-rendered application at 60 frames per second as you drag it across the screen can be surprisingly resource-intensive. On older laptops, computers with very weak integrated graphics, or within Remote Desktop and Virtual Machine sessions, this can cause the window to stutter, tear, or lag significantly behind the mouse cursor. If you are trying to maximize performance on a low-end machine, you should disable this real-time rendering. When disabled, dragging a window will only display a simple, hollow rectangular outline, and the window contents will only snap to the new location once you release the mouse button.
How to Turn Off Real-Time Dragging
You can force windows to only show a wireframe outline while dragging via the advanced system performance settings.
- Click the Start button and type Advanced system settings.
- Select View advanced system settings from the search results. This directly opens the System Properties window to the Advanced tab.
- Under the Performance section near the top, click the Settings… button.
- A new “Performance Options” window will appear. Ensure you are on the Visual Effects tab.
- Scroll through the list of effects and locate the checkbox labelled Show window contents while dragging.
- Click the checkbox to remove the checkmark.
- Click Apply, and then click OK.
From now on, clicking and dragging any window will produce a highly responsive, transparent outline, eliminating all dragging lag on low-end hardware.