Console Tabs Coming to Windows?

I was overjoyed when I first heard that Microsoft would be improving the console in Windows 10 (yeah, really) and we’ve had a steady amount of updates since then – including a load of improvements in the Creators Update.

All the updates we’ve had so far have been great and all… but I’ve been begging to have tab support in the console. And yes I voted for it on User Voice!

This morning I saw a couple of interesting posts from Windows Central and MSPoweruser with reports of a “Tabbed Shell” interface coming to Windows 10 in a future update.

Obviously my nerdy mind immediately went to the command line. (See above for my mock-up of what it might look like.)

It suddenly becomes super-obvious that having tab support at the OS level makes so much sense. From an engineering point of view there is no point in having multiple teams working on their own implementation of tabs in Windows.

When something crashes you don’t want one tab to take out all of the others. With support built directly into the shell you can ensure stability and consistency across all applications.

Hopefully we’ll find out more at the Build conference next month… and hopefully I’ll be using PowerShell in a tabbed interface in the not too distant future!

Note: yes I know there apps which provide tabbed consoles in Windows. I’m really interested by Hyper, but it doesn’t feel ready for every day use yet.