Windows 10: How do I turn off the selection rectangle in Windows 10?

I am annoyed by the selection rectangles around some controls in Windows 10. The selection rectangles are especially noticeable in Microsoft's Office apps like Excel, Word, etc. and in some other apps. The selection rectangles are thick and rather ugly.Is there any possible way to turn off or hide the selection rectangles in Windows? I don't know what these features are actually called, although waaaay back in the 1990's I thought these were called a control "focus", which is not the current "Focus Assist" feature in Windows - a feature I turned off and don't use.Here are a couple screenshot e

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Selection Rectangle Wierdness

Hi Parker,



Welcome to Microsoft Community and thank you for posting. We appreciate your interest in Windows 10.



As per description I understand that you have an issue in setting Performance options on Windows 10.



I would like to inform that when you choose “Let Windows choose what's best for my computer” option as the name says, the system will only choose the default settings on to your computer.

Either you select “Show translucent selection rectangle” option or not does not make any changes.

I suggest you to choose only “Show translucent selection rectangle” and not “Let Windows choose what's best for my computer option”.





Hope it helps. Feel free to contact us for any further queries on Windows Operating System.

 

Icon Bug on WiFi selection (Rectangle appearing in front of Signal)

Thank you for the response. I've turned off airplane mode and it's still exhibiting the problem. Weirdly though, turning off WiFi seems to display the signal strength without the box. My WiFi networks are all secure though, but it still appears in unprotected networks.

Thank you for the suggestion, I've ran the batch file to rebuild the icons but the issue is still persistent. Could this be a conflict within an entry in the Registry Editor? I'm not sure what's the exact address to refresh it or check if it's unedited.

 

Translucent Selection Rectangle

Hi,



Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.



I understand your query related to disabling the translucent selection rectangle on Desktop icons.



Based on my research, when you uncheck the box for Show translucent selection rectangle
under System Properties, it will make the rectangle translucent that appears when drag the mouse and select multiple items on the
Desktop.



However, the rectangle that shows up when you highlight a Desktop icon is to identify which icon is selected, and currently the option to disable that effect is not available in Windows 10, as it will become difficult to identify which icon is selected.



I would encourage you to provide a feedback using the Feedback
Hub app on Windows 10, so that our engineering team can look into this and try to implement the feature in upcoming builds.



Regards,

Prakhar Khare

Microsoft Community – Moderator