Believe it or not, Windows does not offer a function that allows you to keep a window in the foreground regardless of what happens around it. As an alternative, you can resize windows to fit the screen using Snap Assist... but it's not the same. That's when a small program called DeskPins steps in. All it does is add a pin to the top of the window, and although it may lose focus, it will always stay at the front.
The Problem
The multitasking feature is critical on any computer, and it has been with us for decades. A simple Alt+Tab lets us switch from one application to another without problems, and in general its dynamics are excellent. However, the whims of multitasking make a window end up hidden in the background when we actually need to see its content. Windows Snap Assist tries to compensate by spreading all windows across the available screen space, but what happens when we want a single window to remain always in the foreground, regardless of the rest?
How It Works
The answer is that we need to download an external application, and DeskPins is a good candidate. Its installer barely exceeds 100 kilobytes, and it is compatible with all versions of Windows from 95 onward. Once running, DeskPins places a small icon in the system tray, and with a right-click we access its functions. The fastest way to place a pin on a window is using the Ctrl+F12 keyboard shortcut. To remove the pin, just press the combination again, or click directly on the pin. In essence, multitasking is blocked for the window that has a pin, unless you use multiple pins at once. DeskPins has no limits in that regard.
Two details to highlight about DeskPins are that it has not been updated in more than two years, and it is not compatible with universal applications (such as the new Windows 10 calculator), as well as certain programs (CPU-Z was one that failed). Apart from that, it works quite well.
