WindowTabs Portable

Designed as the portable version of WindowTabs, WindowTabs Portable is smart and practical utility that allows you to group windows from distinct applications into multiple tabs and seamlessly access them from a single panel. It basically provides tabbed support for any active window, whether the corresponding application supports this feature or not.

The full package consists of just one .exe file that can be saved anyplace on the disk or copied to a pen drive to effortlessly launch it on any computer. It auto-creates and updates a .txt document in the same directory as itself to remember your settings, so you should make sure not to run WindowTabs Portable from a write-protected device.

No new entries are created in the system registry. Instead, .NET Framework must be downloaded and installed unless you already have it, otherwise the tool cannot be deployed.

This isn't made obvious through visual or audio means but, after firing it up, the application creates an icon in the systray. This way, it extends window functionality with tabbed support while remaining minimally invasive and enabling you to proceed with your typical desktop activity.

The effects can be immediately noticed by taking a look at the tabs of any opened window, even if the corresponding programs were launched prior to running WindowTabs. You can simply click and drag tabs to mesh them together, as well as perform additional actions via the right-click menu.

It's possible to shrink, align or rename tabs, auto-hide maximized windows, combine the icons in the taskbar, as well as close all tabs, all except for the current one, or only the current one.

More options can be personalized from the settings panel, where you can view a list of all active processes and exclude any of them from tab groups or set auto grouping mode. You can edit tab appearance when it comes to the height, maximum width, overlapping, normal and flipped indent size, as well as the normal, highlight, active and flash background colors, plus borders.

By default, the utility autoruns at every Windows startup, and this option can be disabled. It's also possible to disable fade out effects for tabs on inactive windows, combine icons in the taskbar by default, replace the Alt+Tab action with the WindowTabs task switcher, remap hotkeys for visiting the next or previous tab, as well as create and manage multiple workspaces.

Taking into account its wide range of straightforward customization preferences, WindowTabs Portable should meet the requirements of most users looking to boost their productivity by grouping numerous windows into different tabs to control them from a single panel. It used a surprisingly low amount of system resources in our tests.