Overview

Tabs gives a Blender editor browser-style tabs: one area holds several editors, and you click a tab to switch. Each is a real editor with its own view, scroll and tool.

A tab bar above a 3D Viewport with four tabs

Highlights

Any number of editors per area, each keeping its state.
Drag tabs between areas and windows, or tear one off.
Lock the tabs a layout depends on.
Ctrl+T to add a tab by name.
Saved in the .blend.
Follows your theme, or a palette you set.

Compatibility

Blender, Bforartists – version 5.1 – 5.2

Installation

There are several ways to install Tabs — use whichever fits you best.

Drag and drop from Superhive

The fastest route. On your Superhive orders page, drag the Tabs extension straight from the browser into the Blender window. The first time, Blender asks for your Superhive API token (found in your Superhive account settings) and adds Superhive as a remote extension repository.

Once connected, all your Superhive purchases appear under Preferences > Get Extensions with one-click Install — and you get update notifications inside Blender whenever a new version is released.

See Superhive’s own guides: extension support announcement and connecting Superhive as a remote repository.

Install through Blender's extension system

With Superhive connected as a remote repository (see above), open Edit > Preferences > Get Extensions, find Tabs in the list, and press Install. Updates later are a single click on Update.

Drag and drop the downloaded zip

Download the Tabs .zip from Superhive (do not extract it), then drag the file from your file browser into the Blender window and confirm the install prompt.

Install from Disk

Download the Tabs .zip from Superhive. Do not extract it.
In Blender, open Edit > Preferences > Add-ons.
Click the dropdown arrow in the top-right corner and choose Install from Disk…
Select the downloaded .zip and confirm.
Make sure the checkbox next to Tabs is enabled.

All methods work in Bforartists too — Tabs detects the host application automatically.

Updating

Via the Superhive repository: press Update in Get Extensions. Manually: install the new version over the old one and restart. Your tabs, settings, and colours are preserved either way.

Uninstalling

Run Disable Tab Bar for all Editors in all Workspaces first, from Window > Tabs: a bar is a real editor area, so a .blend keeps its bars without it. Then disable or remove Tabs from the Add-ons list.

The Basics

Showing the tab bar

Every editor header has a Tabs button: click for a bar, click again to remove it. It lights up while the bar is showing, so the header always says which state the editor is in.

The Tabs button lit, with the tab bar showing

Adding tabs

Ctrl+T, which searches by name and works with no bar.
The + at the end of the bar.
Right-click the bar, New Tab.

The cursor on the + button at the end of a tab bar holding three tabs

The right-click New Tab list, every editor grouped by category

A placeholder shows where the tab will land; a bar-less editor gets one meanwhile.

A placeholder New Tab at the end of the bar while the search is open

A bar raised over the Outliner for the duration of the search, with the Outliner tinted

The menus

Right-click a tab for its own menu, or the bar for the whole-bar one.

A tab's right-click menu, titled with the tab's name

When the bar fills up

Tabs squeeze to fit, keeping their icon and close button. Past that the bar scrolls, and so does the mouse wheel over it.

A crowded tab bar squeezed down to icons, with its scrollbar

Moving Tabs

Where you drop a tab decides what happens:

On a tab bar — it lands there, across areas and windows.
On a bar-less header — that editor gains a bar with the tab in it.
Anywhere else — it tears off into its own window.

While you are dragging

The tab carries a picture of where it is going; the editor it came from is blanked — red if it is going — with a mark on it:

the icon of the tab that takes over;

A tab dragged out of its bar: the editor it came from is dimmed, with the icon of the tab that takes over in the middle of it, while the dragged tab follows the cursor across the window

an X when it is the last tab: that editor is going;
an arrow beside it, showing which way a neighbour sweeps in. No arrow means several editors share the space.

The last tab dragged out of an editor: an X in the middle of the dimmed editor, and an arrow at the edge that will sweep across as the neighbour takes the space

Splitting with a tab

Hold Shift and the editor under the cursor offers to split. The side nearest the cursor lights up, and the preview grows into the half the new editor would take — tab bar and all.

Shift held over the right of a tabbed editor: the preview grown into the half the split would make, with a tab bar of its own across the top of it

Hold Shift + Spacebar and the seam follows your cursor instead of sitting at the halfway mark, so you place the split where you want it before you let go.

Shift and Space held with the cursor off centre: the seam sits well right of the middle and the preview follows it

A preview that stays at its resting size and turns grey is a refusal: the editor has no room to be cut that way. The same Timeline takes a vertical split and refuses a horizontal one.

A Timeline twice: a vertical split, with the preview grown into the half it would make, above a horizontal split refused, with the preview left at its resting size and drawn grey

An editor Tabs made exists to hold that tab: drag it out and it folds away. Yours do too, unless Primary Areas Keep a Tab is on.

Leaving one tab behind takes the bar away; the Tabs button brings it back. Torn-off windows keep theirs unless Close Tab Bar in Window when one Tab remains is on.

Tearing a tab off: the dragged tab carries a preview of the window it will become, which follows the shape of the drop, and the result is a separate Blender window with its own tab bar

Closing the last tab

The × on a lone tab takes the tab, bar and editor together — not offered for a locked tab, with Primary Areas Keep a Tab on, or in the last editor of the last window.

All of it is animated, and honours Blender's Reduce Motion preference.

Area Edges

Right-click an edge for the Tabs edge menu instead of Blender's Area Options. It has Split, Join and Swap as Blender's does, but treats a bar and its editor as one thing, and adds Close Tab Bar / Add Tab Bar. Entries that cannot apply are greyed.

The Tabs edge menu on an edge that has a tab bar: Close Tab Bar, Vertical and Horizontal Split, Join Up, Join Down, Swap Areas — On an edge that has a tab bar.

The same menu on an edge with no tab bar, where the first entry reads Add Tab Bar instead of Close Tab Bar — On an edge with none — the first entry mirrors.

Locked Tabs

A locked tab cannot be closed, dragged or torn off. Locked tabs sit at the front behind a separator line; Move Tab Left/Right reorders one.

The tab an editor started with is its primary. Lock Primary Tab locks every one at once; unlocking one by hand is remembered.

Primary tab is a tab being locked. Primary area is an editor you made yourself, and is about folding away.

Saving & Loading

Tabs are always saved into the .blend; whether they return follows Blender's Load UI:

On — the file's layout loads and its tabs with it.
Off — your layout is kept; Load Tabs from .blend decides whether the file's tabs land on your areas where they line up.

An area that only existed in the saved file is skipped, and recreating that split by hand afterwards does not bring its tabs back. Bars come back the first time you switch to a workspace.

Settings

Edit > Preferences > Add-ons > Tabs. Every row has a restore button, lit when it is not at its default.

Shortcuts

New Tab, Show/Hide Tab Bar and the bar's right-click binding, all rebindable here. Show/Hide ships with no key — click the field and press one.

Tabs

Load Tabs from .blend — see Saving & Loading.
Lock Primary Tab — see Locked Tabs.
Show + button in Tab Bar — hidden, the tabs use that space.
Select Tab — switch on Press (default) or Release.

Tab bars

Always show Tab Bar with the four rows it governs indented under it

Always show Tab Bar — a bar on every editor. It suspends the four rows under it.
Show Tab Bar on Search, Create Tab Bar on Drop, Close Tab Bar when one Tab remains, and … in Window for windows other than the main one.
Primary Areas Keep a Tab — on, your own editors hold their last tab.

The Tabs button

Whether it is shown, whether it is embossed, and which of four positions it takes in the header. All three grey out under Always show Tab Bar, which hides the button.

Show Tabs Button, Tabs Button Embossed and Tabs Button Position

New Tab search

Show placeholder Tab on Search, Highlight editor on Search and Highlight Tab Bar on Search

Three indicators for where a new tab will go, each switchable: the placeholder tab, a tint on the target editor, and a tint on its bar.

Appearance

Tab Width, Tab Spacing, Show Separator Line and Colors

Tab Width fits each tab to its name or gives them all the same width. Tab Spacing is the gap between tabs, and Separator Line Spacing the gap either side of the line after the locked ones.

The same bar in Fit to Name and in Fixed Width

The same bar at Separator Line Spacing 4 and 20, and with the line off

Colors

Follow Theme tracks your theme; Custom opens fourteen rows — the bar, tab outline, selected and unselected tabs and text, the separator, the + button, and six drag marks, where an Indicator is a mark and a Highlight the tint behind it. A split that cannot happen is always grey, whatever you set here.

The same bar following the theme and with a custom palette

The Colors row set to Custom with all fourteen colour rows open

Bulk Actions

Give every editor a bar, take every bar away, or close all unlocked, locked or every tab. Primaries are kept. Also in Window > Tabs.

The Window menu with the Tabs entry at the bottom

The Tabs submenu in Blender's Window menu

On Bforartists

Tabs works the same on Bforartists, with Bforartists’ own icon set, and the host is detected automatically — there is nothing to set.

One difference is visible. Bforartists draws the Editor Type dropdown before an add-on can reach the header, so the slot to the left of it does not exist and Before Editor Type is not offered. Tabs Button Position lists three places here rather than four: After Editor Type (the default), Right Group, First and Right Group, Last.

Each host keeps its own setting, so moving the button on one never moves it on the other.