Remember Windows Sets? This app can add tabs to all your apps and works great

Back in 2017 and 2018, Microsoft tested a feature called Sets with Windows Insiders. Sets was supposed to be a feature that could force all your apps into tabs, allowing you to have different apps side by side in the same window. Unfortunately, Microsoft itself discontinued the feature after two rounds of testing, and Sets never made it to fruition, even when Windows 11 came out.




That is, if you only consider Microsoft's offerings. While the Redmond giant failed to deliver, Stardock saw an opportunity to do what Microsoft promised, and so we have Groupy. Groupy is essentially what Sets would have been, allowing you to put all your apps into tabs, but the feature was designed to be far more powerful than Microsoft's preview. It's a great app if you've been dreaming of a better way to manage your windows.

Place apps in tabs

It works, even if it is not perfect


The basic idea of ​​Groupy is very simple. Every app you launch is housed in a tab, just like you would see in a web browser or file explorer. When you open a new app, you can add it to an existing window by either dragging one window on top of the other, or you can use the + (plus) button in the main window to add open apps as tabs. It's a system that works well and makes multitasking easier when you only have one screen and especially when you're working on a laptop. It just feels easier to keep track of everything (no pun intended) when you can have everything at the top of your screen and properly labeled.


Groupy gives you the option to either display tabs on top of the existing app window or integrate tabs into the app windows, but really they are more or less the same. The problem here is that Groupy can only integrate with apps that don't have custom title bars, and there aren't that many. So in most cases you will see a title bar for the app in addition to the tab bar.

This is especially true for web browsers, so you'll basically see two rows of tabs most of the time. You can try to get around this by opening each page in a different browser window, but that's a bit awkward. That said, the double tabs didn't bother me that much. If anything, it gave me a lot more things within quick reach, even if it did look a little odd because Groupy's title bar extends a little into the app's title bar.


Other than that, I haven't had any major issues using Groupy. Every app I've tested works just fine with it, and apps like File Explorer actually have the tab interface integrated into the native tabs if you want it.

A highly customizable experience

You can change the look of many things


One thing Groupy does that Microsoft probably never would have done is provide a whole host of customization options. You can choose whether tabs are integrated into the title bar or displayed above it (with the caveat mentioned earlier), change the theme style for the tab bar, choose colors for the tab bar and individual tabs, whether the tab bar should always be visible, and more. You can also add accent colors to Groupy, which you can then apply to tabs on a case-by-case basis to make them easier to spot.

There are also advanced settings for managing groups. For example, if you integrate Groupy tabs with File Explorer, you can choose whether the Close button in File Explorer should close the entire group anyway. You can also choose how quickly grouping is activated when you drag one window over another, so you don't accidentally merge windows into a group when you reorganize your desktop. You can also create automatic grouping rules so that new apps automatically open in a group. You can save a group to launch all of the included apps at once, and you can block certain apps from being grouped together in case you have trouble with a particular app being grouped together. You can make Groupy work the way you prefer, and that's very cool to see.


This is in line with how Stardock's other customization apps work, as the company often likes to overwhelm you with options, which can be both good and bad.

It also cleans up your taskbar

A group can be a single taskbar icon

Screenshot of the general settings in Groupy showing the option to combine icons in the taskbar

One cool thing about Groupy is that it can also help clean up your taskbar by combining apps in the same window. In Groupy settings, you can choose whether you want apps in the same Groupy window to appear separately in the taskbar or combined into a single icon. You can also choose whether you want this group icon to show only the last active window or multiple icons for all apps in the group.


This further contributes to the idea of ​​making window management easier on individual smaller screens. Combining all of your apps into a single icon on the taskbar can help keep the taskbar a bit cleaner and less cluttered when you have a lot of apps open, so it's pretty handy.

Keeping the set dream alive

If you still haven't gotten over the loss of Sets, Groupy is a pretty cool app that delivers on that original vision with some options Microsoft probably never would have offered. While the fact that it's not a proper Windows feature means no apps are really designed around it, Groupy makes the most of it and, for the most part, works flawlessly with whatever apps you use.


The price of $9.99 is a bit high for a relatively simple app, but if you think you could use something like this, it's worth trying out the free trial.

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