Switch between two screens on Windows 11 smoothly.
Switch between two screens on Windows 11 smoothly.
I operate on Windows 11 with two 4K TCL TVs. When playing games in full screen, turning off one monitor causes the game window to shrink with black borders around it, then quickly return to normal. This behavior seems intentional and not a malfunction. To stop it, you can adjust your display settings or use a power-saving mode that disables secondary screens during gameplay.
Now that I have everything ready for my dual-screen arrangement, I’m ready to chat. Fingers crossed we’re not too late. The animation you see in Windows 11 appears when a display-related event happens (besides resolution changes), like when the screen rotates. The problem is that turning off your secondary TV causes it to disconnect from the HDMI cable it’s using. Usually this only happens when the TV is turned on. You can turn off animations, but that impacts all OS animations. My setup behaves the same. I own both LG and Dell screens. The ideal action is that when you power down the screen, it shouldn’t cut off with the active video input, nor when you change inputs. This would restore the zoom-in/out effect, which should only happen once the GPU is re-established (not during input switching). If this is your assumption, manufacturers of TVs and monitors often implement this disconnect logic to save costs. Many brands, like Dell, use simpler circuitry instead of advanced display controllers. They rely on basic switches for one input, tagging it as a single connection, rather than supporting multiple inputs simultaneously. In short, the TV or monitor is built to handle just one source at a time and switches to HDMI/DisplayPort only when needed. However, monitors with proper design can show features like displaying two or four screens at once (PBP and PiP), because they use sophisticated controllers instead of basic switches. As for solutions, there’s no built-in fix other than replacing the TV or monitor that disconnects sources during power-off or input changes. There’s an exception though—some monitors and TVs have power-saving modes that cut off connections to inactive inputs. Check for eco-mode or Deep Sleep settings and disable them if available. If not, a simple controller with a basic switch might work. Otherwise, you’re stuck with what the manufacturer designed. (By the way, even premium LG monitors sometimes compromise on this, as reviewers rarely notice.)