How to exit Explorer in Windows 11?

miroxlav

02 Jan 2025, 14:04 UTC

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In previous versions of Windows, it was easily possible to exit Windows Explorer if needed:
Ctrl + Shift + Right-click the taskbar, then select Exit Explorer menu item.

In Windows 11, this no longer works. Did Microsoft move the functionality elsewhere?

windows-explorer windows-11

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Accepted answer · original discussion

miroxlav

04 Jan 2025, 02:04 UTC

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Short answer:

Press Win + T, then Alt + F4, then Ctrl + Shift + Alt + Esc.

Long answer:

The functionality was moved into Shut Down Windows dialog. Applying step #3 there does the job.

Press Win + T to activate Windows taskbar.
Press Alt + F4 to display Windows shutdown dialog.
Press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + Esc to cancel the dialog.

(The Esc key activates the Cancel button and the modifiers are taken into account. When Explorer sees them, it will exit. You can equally use them while mouse-clicking the Cancel button.)

Source: A comment in Q/A "How do you add a Windows environment variable without rebooting?"

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MiniRagnarokPermalink

05 Jan 2025, 14:04 UTC

On the off chance that you're trying to find a way to close Explorer so that you can restart it there's an easy way to do that. Ctrl + Shift + Esc brings up the Task Manager. Search for Explorer at the top or find it in the list of processes. You can then either select Windows Explorer and hit Restart Task in the upper right hand side or you can right-click and hit Restart.

miroxlavPermalink

07 Jan 2025, 02:04 UTC

@MiniRagnarok – you hit the nail on the head! But here in Superuser site, when I asked about access to feature you mention, the question got score -4 and was almost closed because 'I am solving XY problem and I should not restart Explorer.' Then, after I published slightly different form of that question here, it has score of +10. I did set up this new question also as an experiment with behavior of the community here.

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How to exit Explorer in Windows 11?

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