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 my taskbar? In IE or old Edge if I point my mouse to the icon in the taskbar I get an overview of all my open tabs and by clicking on one, I get directly to this tab instead the last accessed one.
I there anyone else who misses this feature or anyone, who can tell me how to enable it in the new Edge?
Cheers, Chris
Edit: This feature was only available in IE, not in Edge. Edge only had the tab preview by mouseover on tabs in Edge, IE only had the preview by mouseover on the IE icon on the TASKBAR. The new Edge now should have both. "The best of two worlds" 🙂
- Upvote this.....
Dennis5mile I think there would be a lot more "Likes" if Microsoft didn't make it so difficult and irritating to sign up for a community account.
I'd give this 1M likes if I could. I hate not being able to switch between tabs by clicking on a preview in the taskbar.
DW
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.
Found some other threads about the same topic, if you like to share some likes or comments there too:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Discussions/Tab-Preview-in-taskbar/m-p/451320
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Discussions/Scrollbar-on-tab-menu/m-p/430550- Nevermind, this feature is now on the "top feedback summary". We don't have to vote for it anymore, as it is already under review. See the list here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Discussions/Top-feedback-summary-for-September-10/m-p/847266
The feature in that list isn't the same as the taskbar thumbnail preview. The feature mentioned there is the thumbnail preview that's available in the tab bar at the top of the current version of classic/legacy Edge. Classic/legacy Edge also don't have taskbar thumbnail preview. IE has always had it, Chrome used to have taskbar thumbnail preview, and it was recently added back in Firefox. Hopefully this can be added to Edge Chromium!
Chrizzly This is why I still use IE. I'm significantly less productive when I have to hunt for which browser window I need to go back to.
- The browser UI and the tabs section is not helping to choose which tabs to switch to? maybe an option to have tab previews will help that.
HotCakeXI work on multiple topics at the same time and open each topic in a separate browser window to keep them organized. I don't always want to return to the last tab I was viewing. With the current setup, if I have 4 browser windows open, each with 4 tabs, I may have to switch to 4 different windows, and look through all the tabs before I find the one I want. With the IE setup, I had up to about 16 tab previews when I hover over the IE icon on the taskbar and could go directly to the one I want. Having the preview made it easier to deal with more open tabs, not harder. And If it's a screen size/resolution thing, then make it an option. that way people with large screens can enable it. (I don't even work on a huge screen, it's just a 15" 1920x1080 in native resolution 100% scale).
Hoooooly moooly. My laptop rebooted last night after installing updates and my taskbar now shows a preview for every Edge tab I have open! Windows 11 22H2 updated through Feb 2023 and Edge version 110.0.1587.41.
I have not yet verified that my desktop is showing the same behavior. It has a reboot pending for some updates.
