Add Tabbed UI to any Program in Windows 10

TidyTabs is a program that brings tab support to all of your programs. You can add the tabbed browsing capability to any program window, including File Explorer, Office applications, Wordpad, Notepad, etc.

TidyTabs seamlessly integrates with Windows and makes you feel as if the feature is a part of Windows. Tabs can be detached from a group and inserted into another one.

You can even group windows from different applications together; that’s one of its best features.

Moreover, the tabs at the top are set to remain semi-transparent when inactive, so that they’re not obtrusive. They become opaque only when you hover the mouse pointer over the tabs. You can also adjust the active and inactive Tabs transparency levels, as well.

If you don’t need tab support for particular programs, TidyTabs lets you blacklist or exclude them using the executable file name. This feature can be best used for excluding web browsers, as they have tab support already.

Screenshots

The personal edition is a freeware, but you’re not allowed to use it at work. And you can only add a maximum of three windows in a tabbed group, in the free version.

TidyTabs Professional Standard license, available for a princely sum of $9 (and a free trial available), has these additional features:

• Group more than three windows
• Window auto-grouping: You can add the list of processes which you want to auto-group upon launch. You don’t have to drag the window manually to create a tab group every time. For example, if you add notepad.exe, every Notepad instance will be automatically clubbed in a single tabbed group.
• Tab reordering: You can re-arrange tabs as you’d like.
• Tab renaming: Tabs by default use the window title, but TidyTabs Professional Edition allows you to set a friendly name for each tab.
• Middle click to close a tab
• Multi-monitor support
• Allows setting Windows theme color, custom color for tabs, or a different color for each application. This feature, IMO, could be another big selling point of the Pro version.

TidyTabs daemon is very lightweight, occupying just around 2 MB of RAM when tested on a Windows 10 computer.

TidyTabs settings GUI uses about 40 MB of Memory, but it doesn’t run by default — and it’s required only when you need to configure the program.

TidyTabs is compatible with all Windows versions, from Windows 7 to Windows 10, 32-bit and 64-bit. See TidyTabs Download, Versions & Pricing information.

Note: There is also a portable version of the tool available. Portable or standalone executable means you don’t need to install it. And it can run from USB flash drive.