It's the middle of a dogfight. You've got an X-Wing dead in your sights, the TIE Interceptor's engines are screaming, and your finger is twitching on the trigger. Then, out of nowhere, your desktop pops up. The game is gone. You're staring at your wallpaper while your ship drifts into a debris field. This is the Star Wars Squadrons minimize bug, and honestly, it’s been a thorn in the side of the flight sim community since Motive Studios first launched the game.
PC gaming is usually great, but sometimes it's just frustrating. When a game as visually intense as Squadrons decides to dump you back to Windows, it's rarely just a "oops" moment. It's a death sentence for your K/D ratio. The worst part? It isn't always a "crash." The game is often still running in the taskbar, mocking you with its muffled John Williams score while you scramble to click back into the cockpit.
What's Actually Happening When Squadrons Minimizes?
Computers are finicky. When we talk about the Star Wars Squadrons minimize issue, we're usually looking at a conflict between the game's Frostbite engine and how Windows handles "Focus." In Windows 10 and 11, the OS is constantly looking for reasons to steal focus from your active window. It could be a notification from Discord, a Windows Update nag, or even a background process for your mouse software.
The Frostbite engine, which powers Squadrons, is notorious for being sensitive to these interruptions. Unlike some games that just stutter for a second, Squadrons often reacts by shrinking itself down to the taskbar. You'll find yourself clicking frantically, only for the game to minimize again two seconds later. It’s a loop. It's maddening.
Most players assume it's a GPU driver issue. It might be. But more often than not, it's a setting called "Fullscreen Optimization" that Microsoft baked into the OS. It was supposed to make games run better. Instead, for many of us, it just makes them unstable.
The Fullscreen vs. Borderless Window Debate
If you're dealing with the Star Wars Squadrons minimize headache, the first thing people tell you to do is switch to "Borderless Windowed" mode.
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Does it work? Usually.
When you run in "True Fullscreen," the game has total control over the display. This is great for input lag and performance. However, if anything—and I mean anything—interrupts that control, Windows freaks out and minimizes the app to "save" the desktop. In Borderless Windowed mode, the game behaves like a window that just happens to fill the whole screen. Windows doesn't feel the need to minimize it if a notification pops up; the notification just appears on top.
But there’s a catch.
For VR players, this can be a nightmare. Squadrons is one of the best VR experiences out there, but running in borderless mode can sometimes introduce stutter or mess with the frame timing on headsets like the Valve Index or Quest 3 via Link. You have to choose your poison: a potential minimize glitch or a slight drop in smoothness.
Why Windows Notifications are the Enemy
You’ve probably seen "Focus Assist" in your settings. It’s supposed to hide notifications while you play. In reality, it sometimes causes the exact Star Wars Squadrons minimize behavior you’re trying to avoid. The system tries to "block" a pop-up, but the act of blocking it still triggers a focus shift.
I’ve seen cases where a simple "low battery" warning on a wireless controller triggers a minimize. Or worse, a third-party overlay like Origin (now the EA App) or Steam tries to tell you a friend just started playing Peggle. Boom. You're looking at your desktop.
Technical Fixes That Actually Stick
If you want to stop the Star Wars Squadrons minimize cycle, you have to get a bit hands-on with the executable file. Don't worry, it's not "coding." It's just toggling things that should have been off by default.
First, find where the game is installed. You're looking for starwarssquadrons.exe. Right-click that thing. Go to Properties. Under the Compatibility tab, check the box that says "Disable fullscreen optimizations." This tells Windows to stop trying to "help" the game manage its window. While you're there, clicking "Change high DPI settings" and checking "Override high DPI scaling behavior" can also stop the game from resizing itself weirdly when you Alt-Tab.
Then there's the EA App.
The EA App is... well, it’s a bit of a mess compared to the old Origin client. It has a habit of running background processes that steal focus. If you can, disable the in-game overlay entirely. You lose the ability to see invites in-game, but you gain the ability to actually stay in the cockpit.
Graphics Drivers and Refresh Rates
Sometimes, the Star Wars Squadrons minimize problem is a hardware handshake issue. If your monitor is set to 144Hz but the game is trying to force 60Hz (or vice versa) during a scene transition, the monitor might lose signal for a millisecond. Windows sees this as a reason to minimize the window.
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Check your Nvidia or AMD control panel. Ensure your desktop refresh rate matches what you’ve set in the Squadrons in-game menu. Consistency is key here. If the game and the OS are fighting over how many times the screen should blink per second, the OS usually wins by shoving the game into the taskbar.
The Ghost in the Machine: Peripheral Conflicts
Believe it or not, your HOTAS (Hands-On Throttle-And-Stick) might be the culprit. Star Wars Squadrons is built for flight sticks, but some older drivers for Joysticks or even high-polling-rate mice can cause "phantom" clicks.
If your mouse cursor isn't "locked" to the game window—even if you can't see it—a stray movement might move that invisible cursor onto a second monitor. If you click to fire your lasers while that invisible cursor is on Monitor 2, the game will minimize instantly. This is a classic Star Wars Squadrons minimize scenario for multi-monitor users.
Using a tool like "Cursor Lock" or simply turning off your second monitor while playing can solve this. It feels primitive, like something we should have moved past in 2005, but it works.
Actionable Steps to Fix Your Game
Stop looking for a magic "patch" from the developers. At this stage in the game's lifecycle, the version we have is basically the final version. You have to optimize your own environment.
- Kill the Overlays: Turn off Steam Overlay, EA Overlay, and Discord Overlay. They are the primary suspects in focus-stealing.
- Update the EA App: Manually check for updates. The app often hangs in the background and tries to restart itself, which triggers a minimize.
- Check Background Apps: Use Task Manager to see what’s running. Software for RGB lighting (like Razer Synapse or Corsair iCUE) is famous for "pinging" the OS and causing games to lose focus.
- Run as Administrator: It sounds cliché, but giving the game admin privileges can sometimes prevent other apps from "jumping the line" in Windows' priority list.
- Clean Boot: If it keeps happening, try a clean boot of Windows. If the problem disappears, you know it’s a third-party app causing the conflict.
The Star Wars Squadrons minimize bug is annoying, but it's usually fixable once you stop Windows from interfering. Once you've locked down your focus settings and disabled those pesky overlays, you can finally get back to what matters: leading Rogue Squadron to victory without seeing your desktop icons every five minutes.
Stay in the cockpit. Check your deadzones. And for heaven's sake, turn off your Windows notifications before you jump to hyperspace.
Practical Next Steps for Stability
- Toggle Windows Game Mode: For some, turning it OFF prevents the OS from reallocating resources mid-match, which can trigger a minimize.
- Verify Game Files: Whether on Steam or the EA App, run a file verification. Corrupt UI files can cause the engine to "reset" the display mode.
- Check Your Cables: A loose DisplayPort cable can cause a momentary disconnect that forces Windows to redraw all windows, minimizing your game in the process.