Stardock Groupy Delivers Tabbed Windows Ahead of Microsoft

Stardock is releasing its tabbed windows solution Groupy today. The company launched Groupy as a beta almost a month ago, and today it’s releasing it to everyone.

As Brad wrote last month, Groupy is a fantastic app for those looking for a better window management system in Windows. Groupy brings a tabbed windows interface to Windows, helping you be a lot more productive. The app works with every app in Windows (Win32, UWP, etc.), and you can easily group together different windows into a single window simply by dragging one window over another. It’s pretty neat:

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Groupy is only $10 and after using the app for a few hours, I believe it’s worth the money – especially if you only work with a single display. I personally have three monitors for my main machine, so Groupy isn’t really required there. Although I will be using Groupy to combine multiple CMD windows together, I still think the app’s full potential is on a single display machine. On a laptop, for example, the app can be immensely useful when you are working with a lot of different apps at the same time — it just helps with moving between different apps when working on multiple tasks at the same time.

Let’s not forget that Microsoft is also working on a similar feature for Windows 10 called Sets. The company expects to start testing the new feature with some Windows Insiders sometime soon, and all Windows 10 users will likely get the feature in 2018. If you are a regular Windows 10 user, you will have to wait a while if you want to start grouping your windows. And if you aren’t willing to wait or use older versions of Windows, Groupy is certainly the way to go.

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Conversation 15 comments

  • MutualCore

    12 December, 2017 - 3:46 pm

    <p>Except one thing Groupycan't do is persistence. Sets will persist using Microsoft Graph, so when you resume a particular document in Office, it will remember the associated applications and offer the ability to restore all or some of the tabs.</p>

  • JCerna

    Premium Member
    12 December, 2017 - 4:19 pm

    <p>I think it's cool but for me I use the taskbar for switching, you could puy your taskbar at the top and it would be similar. One feature missing is the resume feature Microsoft is promising. Not shooting it down love stardock and community, just not for me.</p>

  • Polycrastinator

    12 December, 2017 - 4:19 pm

    <p>There's no doubt Stardock makes great tools, but with Brad Wardell's continuing full throated support of Gamergate, as well as other problems, I just can't give them any money.</p>

  • johnl

    Premium Member
    12 December, 2017 - 4:38 pm

    <p>I realize people find this utility very helpful (based on Twitter posts), but I don't understand how it can be useful if it doesn't group taskbar icons together. For example, if I have a group with Word and Chrome for personal tasks, and another group with Word and Chrome for work tasks, and I want to switch between the two groups (if both are maximized) then I need to click on the Word or Chrome icons on the taskbar, wait for the little window previews to pop-up and then select one of them, hoping I got the right one for the group I wanted. Is this not a problem because people are using Alt-Tab instead to jump from group to group? If the taskbar icons were combined into a single group icon with possibly a unique color or tooltip then it would be extremely useful. Also if you could pin that group icon to the taskbar and run it to recreate the group…</p>

  • Darekmeridian

    12 December, 2017 - 7:55 pm

  • dontbe evil

    13 December, 2017 - 6:38 am

    <p>I'll wait for the builtin and free version in next windows update</p>

    • PeteB

      16 December, 2017 - 12:12 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#227007"><em>In reply to dontbe_evil:</em></a></blockquote><p>It won't be in the next update </p>

      • dontbe evil

        18 December, 2017 - 5:18 am

        <blockquote><a href="#228216"><em>In reply to PeteB:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p>maybe, I'm not in rush</p>

  • Chris_Kez

    Premium Member
    13 December, 2017 - 9:22 am

    <p>I'm trailing Groupy and so far I like it quite a bit. There are two things I would love to see added:</p><p>1) <strong>Saved Groups</strong>: one of the limitations is that you can't close a Group then re-open it later. I'd like some way to do this, perhaps by naming a group (e.g. Project 1) and saving it, or maybe with a "set aside" function like in Edge that would let me open a Groupy window and see all of my set aside groups.</p><p>2) <strong>Groups on the Taskbar</strong>: when I group things things together I wish the program would create a Group on the taskbar and pull those separate taskbar items into a single stack.</p>

  • will

    Premium Member
    13 December, 2017 - 11:27 am

    <p>So on a different news site they are stating that SETS has been shelved until RS5, or later Windows release.</p>

  • chriswong13

    Premium Member
    13 December, 2017 - 12:19 pm

    <p>Just installed, let's see how I like it…</p>

  • Jorge Garcia

    13 December, 2017 - 4:39 pm

    <p>I do see that somebody somewhere may use and appreciate this feature, however I will not because the functionality (to somebody like me) is pretty much already there. Assuming someone is not an Alt-Tab user (I wish I could be, but can't) they can switch easily between windows from the taskbar, which is lower on the screen than the tabs will be and therefore demands less neck strain. If you use the same group of apps over and over, you can pin them to the taskbar in order (which I do). I know this does more than that, but since I'm not interested in it AT ALL, I hope it can be easily avoided/disabled. It won't matter too much to me anyways, because after going through update hell after update hell on my lesser Windows 10 PC's, I will NEVER upgrade my main machine past its current magnificent state: Windows 8.1.1 with the Stardock Start8 skin. IMO that is the finest OS ever envisioned. I hope that some flavor of Linux as caught up to this interface by the time it becomes unusable, because I am never going Microsoft again while they are still doing their Windows as service down your throat nonsense.</p>

    • Jeff Jones

      13 December, 2017 - 10:22 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#227383"><em>In reply to JG1170:</em></a></blockquote><p>What do you mean by "less neck strain". Is your monitor setup in a non-ergonomic position or something?</p>

  • djncanada

    Premium Member
    17 December, 2017 - 3:28 pm

    <p>just installed on trial, love this service even with multiple screens</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>Thank You</p>

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