Browser-style tabs for your desktop windows. Group windows from any apps and switch between them with a click or a shortcut.
Important
v2026.10.07 preview: redesigned settings, light and dark themes, more shortcuts, workspaces and many fixes. What's changed →
Windows 10 and 11. No installation: download WindowTabs.exe from
Releases and run it.
It runs in the system tray.
- Group windows: drag a tab onto another window's tab bar. Drag it away to ungroup.
- Group an app automatically: right-click its tab → Enable auto-grouping.
- Settings: right-click a tab or the tray icon.
Grouped windows move and resize together. Tabs hide on maximized windows; point at the top edge to show them, or set Auto-hide tabs to Never.
| Action | Default |
|---|---|
| Next / previous tab | Ctrl + Alt + → / ← |
| Tab 1–9 | Ctrl + 1–9 (or Alt) |
| Search tabs | Ctrl + Alt + T |
| New window of the current app | Ctrl + Alt + N |
| Switch tabs with the mouse | Scroll over the tab bar, or Shift + scroll over the window |
| Close a tab | Middle-click |
Change any shortcut under Settings → Shortcuts. If Ctrl/Alt + number conflicts with an app, turn it off for that app from the tab's right-click menu.
Optional, off by default: switch on hover, a leader key to pick tabs by letter (Alt + S, then the key on the tab), automatic tab colors, and an Alt+Tab replacement.
Drag files onto a tab and pause to bring that window forward. On a File Explorer tab, let go to drop them into its folder as Explorer would: Ctrl copies, Shift moves, right-drag asks, and Ctrl + Z in Explorer undoes it.
- Appearance: light, dark or follow Windows; Joined, Folder or Floating tabs; per-tab or per-app colors.
- App rules: choose which apps get tabs and which group automatically.
- Workspaces: save groups and window positions, then restore them onto open windows.
- Taskbar: optionally combine each group into one taskbar button.
- Languages: English, 中文, 日本語.
Settings save automatically to %AppData%\WindowTabs\WindowTabsSettings.json.
For portable use, put that file next to WindowTabs.exe.
Export, import and reset are under Settings → Support.
To update, exit WindowTabs from the tray and replace the exe. Settings are kept.
- No tabs on a window? Check Settings → App rules. Dialogs don't get tabs.
- Odd behavior after upgrading? Settings → Support → Reset to defaults (your old settings are backed up first).
- Run as administrator? Not needed and not recommended. Windows blocks some input between admin and normal windows.
- Dropping files on a tab does nothing? Windows blocks dragging from an app into one running as administrator.
Still stuck? Open an issue and paste the troubleshooting report from Settings → Support. It leaves out window titles and paths.
WindowTabs is an F# WinForms app on .NET Framework 4.8, with a small C# project for Win32 interop. It builds on Windows with the .NET SDK (tested with 10.0) or Visual Studio 2022+ with the .NET desktop development workload.
git clone https://github.com/leafOfTree/WindowTabs
cd WindowTabs
dotnet build WindowTabs.sln # Debug: WtProgram\bin\Debug\WindowTabs.exe
dotnet build WindowTabs.sln -c Release # single exe, as shippedExit WindowTabs from the tray before rebuilding; a running exe locks the output.
You can also open WindowTabs.sln in Visual Studio and start WtProgram.
AI-assisted contributions are welcome. Make sure you understand and have tested your changes. See AGENTS.md, architecture and testing.
- Threads: each tab group runs on its own UI thread, and the main thread owns
settings and window discovery. Calls between them go through the adapters in
Shared/Services.fs. Read architecture before touching this. - UI text: every visible string lives in
Shared/Strings.fswith English, Chinese and Japanese. Machine translation is fine for a first draft; native speakers can refine it. - Settings: names, defaults and ranges are declared once in
Shared/SettingsCatalog.fs; the Settings window, search and reset all read from it. - DPI and themes: use logical pixels and scale with
Dpi.scale; check your UI in light, dark and high-contrast modes.
Created by Maurice Flanagan in 2009 (mauricef/WindowTabs), continued by redgis and payaneco. MIT license.