What's new

1.1.27 August 2026

Setting Tabify up on a second Mac, and finding it again afterwards.

Reaching Tabify

• Right-click any strip or tab for Tabify's own menu. Settings, the getting started guide, and Quit Tabify are now there as well as in the menu bar. macOS quietly drops menu bar icons when the bar is full, which happens easily on a laptop with a notch, and until now that left no way in.
• Quit Tabify from that menu rather than from Activity Monitor. Quitting puts every window back on screen first. Force quitting cannot, so the windows stay parked until Tabify next starts and recovers them.

Permissions

• The Screen Recording request works on a new Mac. It could open System Settings to a list Tabify was not in yet, which left nothing to switch on. Tabify now registers itself properly first, and if you allow it at the macOS prompt you are not asked a second time.
• Asked once per Mac, not at every launch. Your settings follow you between Macs but permissions cannot, so a second Mac inherits real window images switched on with no permission behind it. The request now waits in the menu bar and in Settings instead of interrupting each time.
• The message also says what it should have said all along: this is optional, and Tabify works without it. Tabs show each app's icon instead of a picture of the window.

1.1.16 August 2026

The yellow button now does what you set Tabify up to do, and putting a window away is about five times quicker.

The yellow button

• It uses the way you chose. Until now, clicking a window's yellow button always minimized it to the Dock with the system animation, whatever your setting said, because Tabify only found out afterwards. It now handles the click itself, so the window slides off screen and flies to its tab like every other route. There is a switch in Settings under Tabifying if you would rather it did not.
• The focus leaves with the window. Previously the app stayed in front with a window you could no longer see still holding the keyboard, and clicking its icon in the Dock did nothing at all. Both are fixed.
• Apps that draw their own title bars, Steam among them, do not offer their buttons to macOS, so Tabify cannot see them. Those still minimize the old way and still become tabs. The keyboard shortcut puts them away properly.

Speed

• Putting a window away went from about 0.7 seconds to about 0.13. Tabify was waiting for a confirmation that could never arrive, and giving up after six tenths of a second, every single time. That was the whole gap between a window leaving the screen and the animation starting.

Fixes

• The menu beside the yellow button no longer stays on screen after switching apps with the keyboard, or when the pointer was resting on it.
• Clicking an app in the Dock brings its window back, the same as switching to it with Command Tab.

1.1.06 August 2026

Zones grew up. They remember which apps belong to them, they each carry their own settings, and the strip itself got much better at staying out of the way.

Zones

• Apps learn where they belong. Send a window to a zone by name and that zone becomes the app's home, so its next window goes there without being asked. The most recent choice wins. Minimizing with the yellow button follows the home zone but never changes it. Any tab's menu can unset it, and there is a switch in Settings under Tabifying.
• Every zone has its own settings. Columns, Float Above Windows and Hide When Not In Use are now per zone, each following your global setting until you change it for that one.
• Rename a zone from its own menu.
• Zone names look like tabs. A name takes only the space it needs instead of a band running the length of the strip, and an unnamed zone gets a small handle rather than a sliver.
• Fill a zone in one go. A zone's menu lists the apps that live there, so you can send every Safari window into it without touching them one by one.

The strip

• Auto-hide is on by default, and a hidden strip opens for a moment when a window lands in it, so you can see where the window went.
• A strip snapped to the top edge now hides and opens like the others, and slides behind the menu bar instead of sitting under it.
• Overlapping strips no longer both open at once, an open strip sits above the others, and a strip no longer closes while the pointer is still on it.

Tabs

• Close a window, or quit its app, from a tab's menu. Closing brings the window back first, so if the app asks about unsaved changes the question appears somewhere you can answer it.
• Tabs sit centred in their strip whichever edge it is on.

Getting started

• A short guide on first launch that ticks itself off as you use the app, rather than showing you pictures of it. It is always in the menu bar under Getting Started with Tabify.
• Tabify offers to keep itself running at login after your first tab, and never registers itself without asking.

Updates

• Tabify checks for a new version each time it starts, as well as daily.
• This page: release notes now appear in the update window and on the website.

1.0.05 August 2026

The first public release. Tabify turns any Mac window into a small tab on the edge of your screen, and clicking the tab brings the window straight back to where it was.

• Minimize a window by any route, the yellow button, Cmd-M, or an app's own Window menu, and it becomes a tab.
• Hover the yellow button for a palette that tabifies a single window, or every window of the app, and picks which zone it goes to.
• Zones: as many strips as you like, on any edge or floating free, each with its own name, colour and tab size.
• Three ways to put a window away: slide it off screen, minimize it to the Dock, or hide the whole app. Off screen is the default and the only one Tabify can animate itself.
• Optional window snapshots, so a tab shows the real window rather than the app icon.
• Keyboard shortcuts for tabifying the front window, everything, or everything except what you are working on.
• Settings sync between your Macs through your own iCloud Drive.
• Automatic updates, signed, and never installed without being asked.