It's finally happening! File tabs in Windows Explorer, or at least almost certainly. There
are a few caveats I have to mention before you get your hopes too high. So basically yes,
the feature of file tabs in File Explorer has been added into a dev channel build
of the Windows Insider program. The early release, basically. However, that doesn't
necessarily mean it's a hundred percent going to end up in the final version of Windows.
The Windows Insider program basically allows you to sign up to get early builds of Windows,
but it's not like things go from the dev channel to the beta channel and always end
up in the final release. Basically the dev channel is kind of like, you can think of it
like, a hodgepodge of random features getting added, but they might be taken out before the
final build or the beta build, and they might never see the light of day again.
So it's not guaranteed that a feature in the dev channel ends up in the rest of it. And also this
feature has not been officially announced in any capacity. In fact, it's so hidden away in the
build of Windows that there's not even a setting to toggle it. You have to use a special tool
that was built to basically enable hidden features toggled away in the Window settings.
So it doesn't seem like it was really intended to be found and made public yet,
but it was. That being said, this is one of the most highly requested features in all of Windows,
so I do have high hopes that this will be the eventual time that they finally add it. All
right so all of that aside, here's how you actually would enable this if you wanted it to.
So the first step is to be in the dev channel on the computer,
in the windows insider program. And specifically you need Windows build
22572. However, you probably don't want to be on the dev channel on your main computer
because it's not as stable as other builds, it's like the earliest possible build.
And also you can't go back to normal windows from the dev channel without completely reinstalling
Windows. So maybe in a virtual machine, which is what I'm going to be doing, just to show you,
or like a secondary computer that is not critical. Next,
you would download this tool, which is available on GitHub. It's called Vive Tool.
And then you run a specific command, which you can see here.
What it does is outside the scope of this video. And then after you run it and restart windows,
the File Explorer will now have tabs. So let's take a look. It's pretty much straightforward,
actually. It's basically what you would expect. It looks nice.
You can click the plus button to open a new tab in the same directory you're in,
or you can also right click something and click on new tab from there to open it.
Middle mouse clicking a tab will close it. And if it's the only tab open in a window,
then middle clicking, it will just close the whole Window.
And if you open too many tabs to see, then there is an overflow feature where it'll show a little
arrow, and you can use that to scroll. Again, that's the current state. This is
very much an unfinished feature. So hold your criticisms and stuff
for the future. I'm sure they're probably going to be adding a way to make this a little bit better.
Like maybe listing all the tabs or something as a dropdown,
we don't know yet. Another thing that shows that it's unfinished is you can drag the tabs,
but you can't actually rearrange them. So you can't actually put them anywhere after dragging
them. So clearly this is not finished. I mean, it wasn't even announced yet.
So again, don't worry if something doesn't seem right or is missing something. It's not done yet.
Now by default the name of the tab and the title of it will just be the name of the folder you're
in. But I did notice something that I haven't seen anyone mention before, which is if you go into
the folder settings, if you enable "display the full path in the title bar", which is a feature
in current Windows, it does actually display the full path in that tab.
Though in its current state, if the path is too long, which is probably most of the time,
it just kind of cuts off. So you can't actually see which folder him. I'm assuming they are
going to address that though. But if you do hover over the tab, it will show the actual full path.
I also randomly just tested making the so-called "God Mode" folder, and yes, it does open
that in a new tab. Though it just shows a blank title as the tab name but that is how it looks in
normal Windows anyway, so no surprise there. But it is cool that even though you can't use tabs
for control panel and stuff, you can still sort of get to all those from this God mode folder.
And then if you're curious, here's what it looks like in dark mode,
it still looks nice. So it's a very simple feature, there's not too much more to say
about it, but it does make a big difference, which is why I think so many people have been
requesting it for so long. It's really about time, assuming they do end up adding it.
Like I said, though, don't get your hopes up too high until it ends up in at least the beta
build or maybe at least until they announce it or something as something they're intending to put
into the final build. Because you might not remember that back in, I think it was like 2018,
there was another Windows Insider early build that had a feature
called "Sets", which was basically tabs.
Although it did allow for any program to be put into tabs on a window. And that feature
ended up just disappearing, that never ended up in Windows. So hopefully that won't happen here,
maybe the previous one with sets was more complicated because it did allow
multiple programs. Whereas this one appears to be just for File Explorer,
so it might be easier to implement. Now, even though I know this is an unfinished feature
that being said, I do have a couple of wishlist suggestions, if anyone from
windows is watching this. One thing that would be cool is being able to maybe change the color
of different tabs. So it would make it easier if you're managing a whole bunch of them.
It could also maybe allow you to distinguish between two tabs if the folders have the same
names, for example. Which is something I have run into using the third-party
"Groupy" program. And there have been times where I've been opening two folders
in different locations, but it's the same name, and I got kind of confused. Or maybe
even allow you to just set a custom name for a tab or something like that, could work.
I also think it would be cool if you could preset different groups of tabs. So say you have a group
of tabs that you use whenever you're making a video, for example [is one] that I would use.
Maybe I would have one for the stock photos, one for the video footage, folder and stuff. And I
could just click one shortcut that I could make, and then it would open all of them up.
Or maybe there would be some kind of favorites dropdown. So kind of similar to how the Windows
Terminal, the new one has, where you can create a shortcut and it opens up
a set of different tabs, like the PowerShell and Command Prompt, whatever you set. So that
would be nice as well. Anyway at this point though, we still can only hope.
Although I do think that Microsoft understands this is basically THE big feature request,
as far as I know, that everyone universally wants in Windows and has been requesting. I believe
it's already in Mac and everywhere else. So it's only a matter of time,
as far as I assume. And also this feature seems well implemented already.
I mean, this is definitely not something they just
whipped up yesterday. And I would even say that it's usable and it's state, even though
it's kind of unfinished. There's a couple of things that they can add, like the dragging
tabs. But other than that, I mean, it's a super simple feature and it works how you'd expect now.
So even though there's not really any bells and whistles, you know,
I wouldn't even be mad if they said, "you know, this is what you get". I'd be like,
"fine, I'll take it". So I can't think of a reason why they wouldn't be adding it finally this time,
but we're only going to know for certain after it's already in. So not too much more to say,
or to be able to show you at this point. If you guys want to keep watching,
the next video I'd recommend is that one I was mentioning with the different Insider channels.
You can definitely check that out and you'll get a way better understanding of how all that
works. Also consider subscribing. If this is your first time watching my channel, maybe
look at the other videos I've made recently and decide you want to subscribe. So thanks
so much for watching guys. I'm looking forward to hearing what you think and thanks for watching.