Forum Discussion
Tab preview in taskbar
Am I the only one who misses the overview of all my open Edge-tabs in the taskbar or do I have a special setting enabled which allows me to see only the current tab if I mouse-over the Edge icon in m...
Chrizzlyyour not the only one and even now in 2022 people asks
Therefore, this topic is still not done. A small update, for those who come here via search engines. It is February 2022.
Two things have been requested here:
A: Tab previews, like in the old Edge:
There is no 100% implementation of the solution from the legacy edge in the new edge, and there won't be. However, it is possible ...
- ... to activate the function "edge://flags/#tab-hover-card-images", so that tab previews will get a screenshot when hovering over them. Insert this in your Omnibox, choose "Enabled" und restart. If this is not enough, you can ...
- ... show the window switcher with ALT+TAB. There, the last 5-7 used Edge browser's tabs are displayed with a preview image. But ...
- ... If you only want to see the tabs in Edge (and all Tabs), you can use the Chrome extension Tab Preview Board) or similar. They work very well.
B: Tab previews in the Windows taskbar.
This wish ... see. This question will always come up. Because the problem is terribly documented. That is why not many know:
It used to work 10 years ago, but never since. It was intentionally patched out again. It does not work!
Why?
You have to know one thing: The new Edge is based on Chromium, as are many browsers these days. Vivaldi, Opera and so on. And that's probably where the problem is. I haven't seen a Chromium-based browser that has this feature in my lifetime.
It is not only Edge, there are also users of Chromium or Chrome or many other Chromium based browsers that would love to have this feature. The only problem is that to add this functionality, the core of Chromium will most likely have to be modified, but the Chromium developers have been refusing to do so for years. It was possible in 2011, but only for a short period.
Their excuse for not supporting it is something like "With our browser you can have up to 100 tabs open at the same time. Shall we take screenshots of all tabs and shoot them into your taskbar? They didn't manage to stabilize the feature and didn't want to fix it."
Maybe there is some truth to this, because the above mentioned tab preview via ALT+Tab was limited by Microsoft to the last 5 active tabs. This was certainly not only for optical reasons. Think about it.
Issue 10368027: Remove Aero Peek Tabs code. - Code Review (chromium.org)
8036 - Show thumbnails for open tabs on Windows 7 superbar (Aero Peek) - chromium
So much for the status at the beginning of 2022.
Hope, that is all so understandable.
If so, I would appreciate an upvote.
I will publish a blog post about this mess. --> https://ownonline.eu/en/blog/2022/11/08/chromium-tab-preview-in-the-windows-taskbar-why-it-didnt-happen/
Today still people ask about this topic in several forums . Well and why? Because these idiots at Google still provide instructions to activate this function from ten years ago as search results. So you can only put your hand in front of your head for a really nice facepalm ala Jean Luc Picard 😉
Greetings
Patrick
I use Windows 10 Pro, usually just Chrome browser because I like being able to turn off auto-discard for open browser windows. I no lonegr see multi browser windows peek preview just the last one looked at before minimizing all, so I guess it was a Chromium update that ended the multi preview peek for browsers. It still works for other apps like word file apps when task bar gets full. NOTWWORTHY, MY PC DOEAN'T LAG AS MUCH WHEN I HAVE MULTIPLE BROWSER WINDOWS. MAYBE THIS IS WHY. I GUESS NO BIGGY. JUST LFT CLK BAR TAB MOVE MOUSE UP TO BRWOSER WINDOW WANTED.