Microsoft has been working on a tabbed file explorer for Windows 11 for some time, but the work has progressed rather slowly, and at present, the tabbed version of the File Explorer is not available to mainstream users.
Windows fan site Neowin has noticed some new improvements to the hidden tabbed File Explorer in the most recent Windows 11 Insider Dev Channel build 22572.
The biggest improvement is the ability to re-arrange the tabs by clicking and holding, just like in a browser. You can also drag a tab off the window to create a new instance, but cant yet drag a tab from one Explorer window to another.
You can also switch tabs by pressing Ctrl + Tab to move to the next tab and Ctrl + Shift + Tab to switch to the previous tab. Unfortunately you are not yet able to cycle completely through the tabs yet.
There is no guarantee that the feature will eventually come to mainstream users, but Insiders can try it out by enabling the feature using Vivetools as below:
- On Windows 11 Dev Channel build 22572.
- Download ViVeTool from GitHub.
- Open Command Prompt as admin in the ViveTool directory.
- Type vivetool addconfig 34370472 2 and press Enter.
- Restart your PC.
To revert to the “default” File Explorer repeat the process but using the command vivetool delconfig 34370472 2
