How to Enable or Disable Tabs (Sets) in Windows 10

Tab Tabs Icon

Windows Timeline and Sets are two of the most exciting features of the upcoming Windows 10 "Redstone 4" update. In this article, we will see how to enable or disable the Sets feature if it is available to you.

Note: As of this writing, the Sets feature is available to a small select group of Insiders. Microsoft is performing A/B testing with this feature in Windows 10 Build 17063. Here is how to find if you have Sets enabled:

How to find if you have Sets enabled

What is the Sets feature

Sets is the implementation of the tabbed shell for Windows 10 which will allow app grouping exactly like tabs in a browser. When enabled, Sets will allow combining windows from different apps in a tabbed view. Just like you can switch between web pages with tabs, each open tab will represent a running app.

With Cortana integration, Sets will sync between all your devices. It will be integrated with the Timeline feature as well, so it will be possible to quickly restore an entire group of app tabs that you closed earlier.

The idea behind Sets is to provide the ability to conveniently group apps for a task you are doing in one window. For example, you could arrange all your running Microsoft Office apps in one group.

How to Enable or Disable Sets in Windows 10

  1. Open Settings.
  2. Go to Settings -> System -> Multitasking.
  3. Under "Tabs in apps", enable the option Allow new tabs to by created in my windows to enable the Sets feature.
  4. To disable Sets, turn off the option mentioned in the previous step.

Update: Starting in Windows 10 Build 17639, the option appears as a toggle switch:

The final version of the Sets feature may come with Windows 10 Redstone 5. This could change if Microsoft prioritizes the Sets feature to ship with Redstone 4 but as of this writing, that does not seem to be the case. Also, the name for Sets may change in the final release.

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

5 thoughts on “How to Enable or Disable Tabs (Sets) in Windows 10”

  1. Unfortunately, I don’t see the Tab in apps setting. I can confirm that my build is correct and I am in the Skip Ahead branch. Is there a registry value I needed to edit/add/remove to show it?

  2. I found that if I add “File Explorer” to the list of apps that aren’t allowed to use sets then this horrible “feature” goes away. File explorer is not IE and we run “Windows 10” not “Screens 10”. Un-maximize your windows, drag and drop, and stop Home->Copy then Home->Paste-ing everything…argh, do you even windows people!?! :)

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