If you’ve ever tried to alt-tab out of a PC game and watched your screen freak out for a solid five seconds, you already know why borderless fullscreen mode exists.
It’s the sweet spot between exclusive fullscreen and windowed mode, giving you that clean, full-screen look while still letting you switch between apps without your game having a meltdown.
The problem? Not every game supports it out of the box.
Some older titles only offer exclusive fullscreen or basic windowed mode. Some don’t bother including the option at all.
The good news is there are several ways to force borderless fullscreen on pretty much any PC game. Let’s walk through every method that actually works.
What Is Borderless Fullscreen and Why Would You Want It?
Before we dive in, let’s quickly cover what borderless fullscreen actually is.
Exclusive fullscreen gives your game total control over the display. Performance can be slightly better, but alt-tabbing is slow and sometimes causes crashes or black screens.
Windowed mode runs the game in a regular window on your desktop. Great for multitasking, but you’ve got borders, a title bar, and usually a smaller play area.
Borderless fullscreen (also called borderless windowed) runs the game in a window stretched to cover your entire screen with no borders. It looks identical to exclusive fullscreen, but switching to another app is instant and smooth.
This is especially useful if you use multiple monitors, stream your gameplay, or just like being able to quickly check Discord without your game throwing a fit.
On modern versions of Windows 10 and 11, Microsoft has optimized borderless windowed mode so much that the performance gap between it and exclusive fullscreen is practically gone for most games.
Check Your Game’s Built-In Settings First
This sounds obvious, but always check the game’s own video or display settings first.
A lot of modern games already include a borderless fullscreen option. It might just be labeled differently than you’d expect.
Look for options like “Borderless”, “Borderless Windowed”, “Fullscreen Windowed”, “Maximized Window”, or sometimes just “Windowed (Fullscreen)”.
Games built on the Unity engine are particularly sneaky about this. Unity often labels its borderless fullscreen mode as just “Fullscreen,” which can be confusing since it’s not actually exclusive fullscreen.
If your game has this option built in, that’s always the best route. Native support means the game is designed to work properly in that mode.
But if the option isn’t there, or it’s not working the way it should, keep reading.
Use Steam Launch Options
If you’re playing through Steam, launch options are one of the quickest and easiest ways to force borderless fullscreen without touching any files or downloading extra software.
Here’s how to do it:
Right-click the game in your Steam library and select Properties.
In the General tab, find the Launch Options field.
Type in one of the following commands depending on what the game supports:
-windowed -noborder is the most common option and works with a huge number of games, especially titles built on the Source engine and many other popular engines.
-popupwindow is the go-to command for Unity engine games. If -windowed -noborder doesn’t work, try this one instead.
-window-mode borderless works with some specific titles and engines.
You may also want to pair these with a resolution command to make sure the game fills your screen. For example: -windowed -noborder -w 1920 -h 1080 (replace the numbers with your monitor’s native resolution).
Not every game responds to these commands, but a surprisingly large number do. It’s always worth trying before moving on to more involved methods.
Edit the Game’s Config Files
When launch options don’t work, manually editing the game’s configuration files is often the next best approach.
Most PC games store their display settings in a config file somewhere on your system, usually an .ini, .cfg, or .xml file.
These files are typically found in the game’s installation folder, your Documents folder (often under Documents\My Games\[Game Name]), or the AppData folder (usually at AppData\Local\[Game Name]).
Open the config file with a basic text editor like Notepad and look for settings related to fullscreen, window mode, or borders.
For Unreal Engine games, you’ll often find a file called GameUserSettings.ini. Look for the line FullscreenMode= and set it to 1 for borderless windowed. A value of 0 is exclusive fullscreen and 2 is regular windowed mode.
For other engines, you might see settings like Fullscreen=0, Borderless=1, or WindowMode=borderless. The exact names vary, but they’re usually self-explanatory once you find them.
Pro tip: After editing the file, set it to read-only by right-clicking the file, selecting Properties, and checking the Read-only box. This prevents the game from overwriting your changes next time it launches.
Always make a backup copy of any config file before you start editing, just in case.
Use Borderless Gaming (Free Tool)
If neither launch options nor config edits do the trick, it’s time to bring in a dedicated tool.
Borderless Gaming is the most popular app for this exact purpose. It’s an open-source tool that forces any windowed game into a borderless fullscreen state.
Here’s how it works:
Download Borderless Gaming from its GitHub page or through Steam (the Steam version has a small price tag, but the GitHub version is free).
Launch the game first and set it to windowed mode in the game’s own settings. This is important because the tool works by taking an existing window and removing its borders while maximizing it to fill the screen.
Open Borderless Gaming and it will detect your running game window. You can then select it and apply the borderless fullscreen treatment.
The newer versions include a Profiles system that saves settings for individual games, so the tool can automatically apply borderless mode every time you launch a specific game.
It also supports multi-monitor setups, letting you choose which display the game appears on.
This tool is a lifesaver for older games that have zero borderless support.
Windows Fullscreen Optimizations (The Built-In Solution)
Here’s something a lot of people don’t realize: Windows 10 and 11 already have a built-in system that essentially converts exclusive fullscreen games into an optimized borderless windowed mode behind the scenes.
It’s called Fullscreen Optimizations, and it’s been enabled by default since Windows 10.
When this feature is active, your game thinks it’s running in exclusive fullscreen, but Windows is actually running it in a highly optimized borderless window.
This means you might already be running in borderless mode without even knowing it.
If you want to make sure this feature is working properly:
On Windows 11: Go to Settings > System > Display > Graphics. Under Default settings, make sure “Optimizations for windowed games” is turned on.
On a per-game basis: Right-click the game’s .exe file, go to Properties > Compatibility tab, and make sure “Disable fullscreen optimizations” is unchecked. If it’s checked, Windows won’t apply its optimizations to that game.
This feature works with DirectX 10 and 11 games. DirectX 12 games already run in borderless window mode by design, so they don’t need this optimization.
If you’re having performance issues with a game in borderless mode, toggling this setting on or off for that specific game is a good troubleshooting step.
The Keyboard Shortcut You Should Know
Alt + Enter is a classic Windows keyboard shortcut that toggles many games between fullscreen and windowed mode.
It won’t always give you borderless specifically, but combined with Windows Fullscreen Optimizations, switching to fullscreen with this shortcut often results in the game running in an optimized borderless state anyway.
Not every game supports this shortcut, and some intercept the key combination for their own purposes. But when it works, it’s the fastest possible fix.
Tips for the Best Borderless Fullscreen Experience
Once you’ve got borderless fullscreen working, there are a few things you can do to make sure it runs as smoothly as possible.
Match your game resolution to your desktop resolution. Borderless mode works best when the game is running at the same resolution as your Windows desktop. If there’s a mismatch, you might see scaling issues or the game might not fill the screen properly.
Enable G-Sync or FreeSync for windowed mode. If you have a variable refresh rate monitor, make sure your GPU’s control panel is set to enable G-Sync or FreeSync in windowed and borderless modes, not just fullscreen.
Keep your GPU drivers updated. Both NVIDIA and AMD regularly improve how their drivers handle borderless windowed games, so running the latest version ensures the best compatibility.
Close unnecessary background apps. Since borderless mode shares system resources with the rest of your desktop, heavy background apps can impact performance more than they would in exclusive fullscreen.
Check PCGamingWiki for game-specific fixes. They maintain detailed pages for thousands of PC games with specific instructions for enabling borderless mode, known issues, and workarounds.
Borderless fullscreen really is the best way to play most PC games in 2025 and beyond. With Windows doing a lot of the heavy lifting now, it’s never been easier to get that seamless, full-screen experience while still having the flexibility to multitask.
Whether you use Steam launch options, config file edits, a tool like Borderless Gaming, or just let Windows handle it, there’s a method here that will work for pretty much any game in your library.