Display tabs in the alt-tab switcher

[electronic-dk]

One of the features in the latest windows insider build (20161) is the ability to display Edge's tabs alongside the open apps in the alt-tab switcher. I think that it may be pretty convenient (I loved this feature back in Android 5-6 times). Do you think it's something that can be brought over to MS Terminal as an optional feature (or an extension perhaps)?

[zadjii-msft]

I don't know how this works in Edgium, but I'd imagine it's similar to the code that we'll need for #687 (also see #2887 and #3247 which helped lead me to that one).

I'm inclined to leave this open alongside #687, since that one seems to be specific to "tabs in the taskbar", and this one is "tabs in the alt-tab" switcher. If someone could point me at the specific APIs that would suggest these are in fact the same APIs, we can close this one. I'm thinking that they're definitely different though, since the old IE had tabs in the taskbar, but not alt-tab.

[electronic-dk]

@zadjii-msft I'd say those should be different apis, since AFAIK the tabs in the alt-tab switcher feature in Edgium canary are only available in the Windows Insider build (20161) and not in stable Windows versions.

[DHowett]

This is not currently possible via public API. I'm going to close this for now, but bring it back when there's an SDK that would allow for us to accomplish it.

[hougaard]

Soo... The terminal is a second-class citizen in Windows compared to Edge?

Or is this actually a request for Windows and not Terminal?

[zadjii-msft]

It's more of a request on the OS to make whatever API they're using publicly available. The Terminal is an open-source project, so we can only call APIs that are publicly available. Edgium is not open source, so they don't have the same restrictions.

[oxygen-dioxide]

It's more of a request on the OS to make whatever API they're using publicly available. The Terminal is an open-source project, so we can only call APIs that are publicly available. Edgium is not open source, so they don't have the same restrictions.

Microsoft can provide a closed-source enhanced version of windows terminal("windows terminal plus") with this feature.

[DHowett]

We strive to be utterly committed to open-source and openness. I wouldn’t want to break that commitment to bring folks a feature that is, at the best of times, somewhat annoying. 😄

[shmuelie]

Shouldn't Taskbar Thumbnails do this?

[zadjii-msft]

@shmuelie That's actually slightly different, and tracked in #687. Seems like that would be a sensible place for apps to publicly be able to add "tabs" to alt-tab, but alas, we don't control that API's existence 😉