Every so often you come across an app and think “this should be built into the OS”. One example is an app like Rainmeter and being released today in beta is another and it’s called Groupy.

The easiest way to describe this is that it brings tabs to everything in Windows 10. And when I say anything, I mean it; if it’s in a window, it can be tabbed.

For example, if you have wanted tabs in File Explorer, this app makes that possible. But it goes beyond one single app as you can mix and match any application as I currently have Skype, Todoist and my calendar in one group.

If you use Excel, adding tabs to the app with all your open spreadsheets makes it much easier to stay organized. The same can be said if you use the Adobe suite too. Frankly, once you start using the app you begin to wonder why Microsoft never built this into the OS.

When an app is grouped, it still respects alt+tab for easy app switching and if you move your mouse over a tab, a drop down appears showing a small preview of the app. And as you would expect, there are keyboard shortcuts for power users with Win + ~ to cycle through the tabs in a selected window.

One thing I do recommend if you give Groupy a try is turning on “hold shift” to create a group as it’s quite easy to accidentally create a group if you keep it as drag-and-drop. This setting removes some of the frustration as you are

My desktop is a triple monitor setup and I will say that for those who have multi-monitor setups, Groupy may not be essential. That being said, on my laptop, Groupy is quite helpful and even on the multi-monitor setup, simply having tabbed File Explorer makes life a little bit better.

I know that Microsoft has looked at bringing tabs to Windows 10 for some time but here we are, several years after release, with nothing to show for it. I’ve been using this app for about a week and it works incredibly well; it functions like a browser tab but across the entire OS.

The app will be coming out next month for $10 but if you are using Object Desktop today, you can try out the beta right now.