BWT
Download Free - your OS
// BETTER_WIN_TAB

The tool that should
have shipped with your OS.

Context-aware window navigation. Folders that fill themselves. Fuzzy search across every open window. Free. Open source. Native.

No telemetryNo cloudNo account100% local
Download - It's free & open sourceView Source on GitHub

Three keystrokes.
One workflow.

01Ctrl + Tab

Open the overlay

One shortcut. Every window appears instantly, grouped by context.

02Type or navigate

Find your window

Fuzzy search across titles, processes, and subtitles. Or use arrow keys.

03Enter

Focus locked

The selected window snaps to foreground. The overlay vanishes.

See the difference.

Alt+Tab - Before
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Flat list. No context. No search.
BetterWinTab - After
>Search windows or launch apps...Refresh
BetterWinTab
Ctrl + Tab to toggle
+
All Windows
All open windows
{}
VS Code
Process: Code
O
Browser
Process: chrome
$
Terminals
Process: wt / pwsh
#
Explorer
Process: explorer
+ Add Folder
Delete Folder
Settings
All Windows
13 open windows
Brave
Gemini - Brave
Brave
landing
Language Models
Code
BetterWinTab
TUTORIAL.md
Code
Discord
Amigos - Discord
Discord
Gmail
Google Chrome
chrome
Windows Terminal
wt.exe
wt

You have Digital Diogenes Syndrome.

Your desktop isn't a workspace. It's a graveyard of contexts. 8 VS Code windows. 15 Chrome tabs. 4 terminals. 3 Slack threads. All alive. All undead. All fighting for your attention.

Every time you press Alt+Tab, your OS hands you a flat list ordered by the last thing you touched - with zero knowledge of why you opened any of it.

“A flat list of 50 windows is not productivity.
It's archaeology.”

~10% chance of your target being in the first 5 results with 50+ windows.

code.exe and chrome.exe side by side with no organizational distinction.

Every click reshuffles the deck. No spatial memory. Only temporal decay.

The folder that fills itself.

A Smart Folder watches your running processes in real time. The moment you open a new VS Code window, it appears in your context automatically - no drag, no assignment, no friction.

Create custom folders by hand: drag and drop any window. Combine automatic rules with personal organization. Zero configuration for VS Code, Chrome, Windows Terminal, Rider, Figma.

“Smart Folders solve the fundamental problem of manual organization: it degrades with use. A rule never gets tired.”
Auto-captureDrag & drop manualClass-level rulesZero config

Type wrong. Find right.

A custom fuzzy matching engine built for the way developers type under pressure: fast, imprecise, multi-word, cross-field. Consecutive bonuses, word-boundary rewards, and multi-token decomposition - inspired by fzf, built in C#.

Fuzzy matchApp launcherMulti-token searchCross-field scoring

A search bar is not a luxury.
It's the interface.

The fastest way to reach any window is to name it. BetterWinTab's search spans every open window by title, subtitle, and process name in real time. No window found? It becomes an app launcher. Still nothing? Press Enter and your query runs as a shell command.

01

Find a window

Search across title, subtitle, and process name. Fuzzy. Cross-field. Instant.

02

Launch an app

No window found? Scans your installed apps. Open in one keystroke.

Your workflow.
Your aesthetic.

Curated themes and a full color engine. Accent, surface, card, border, text hierarchy, danger states. Every semantic color token exposed. Live preview. Named presets.

Your OS has friction.
BetterWinTab removes it.

Daily frustrations you've accepted as normal. Fixed in one overlay.

An icon you can never find. Minimize 12 windows just to reach the trash.

Direct shortcut. One keystroke.

Loads emoji, GIFs, stickers. Animation-heavy. Slow to respond.

Instant. Text-only. Keyboard-driven.

800ms+ animation. Flat grid. No search. No context.

<50ms. Fuzzy search. Keyboard-first.

“If a system requires you to minimize 12 windows to reach the trash, the system is the trash.”

Built for how
you actually work.

{ }

Developers

Multiple VS Code windows, terminals, browsers. Jump between code contexts instantly.

VS Code, Terminal, Chrome, Rider
O

Designers

Figma, browsers, file explorers. Switch between creative tools without breaking flow.

Figma, Chrome, Explorer, Photoshop
+

Multitaskers

Slack, email, docs, spreadsheets. Every work context organized and one keystroke away.

Slack, Outlook, Word, Excel, Teams

Every action.
One hand.

Ctrl+Tab
Toggle overlay
Tab
Next folder
Shift+Tab
Previous folder
Arrow keys
Navigate windows
Enter
Focus window / Launch app
Esc
Clear search / Close overlay
Delete
Close selected window
F5
Refresh window list

The tool that should
have shipped with your OS.

Alt+Tab has been the primary native tool for window navigation since the concept was first introduced decades ago. The average developer's open window count has grown 10x. The tools have not.

BetterWinTab was built by a developer who spent too many hours hunting for the right window and decided that keyboard-driven, context-aware navigation should be the default.

“Your workflow shouldn't bend to your tools.
Your tools should bend to your workflow.”

The Hard Truth.
We address it first.

DwmRegisterThumbnail registers a dependency inside the DWM compositor - no additional render pass. Measured: 0% GPU delta with 20 thumbnails vs. 0.
Detects exclusive fullscreen and skips overlay injection. Game performance is unaffected.
~35-45 MB at idle. WinUI 3 window 0% CPU when overlay is hidden.
Zero network code. No telemetry, no analytics, no cloud. All data stored locally in %AppData%/BetterWinTab. MIT-licensed - verify it yourself.
Uses Ctrl+Tab by default (configurable). Doesn't replace system Alt+Tab. Runs alongside PowerToys or any other tool.
WinUI 3 accessibility tree. Window cards expose titles to UI Automation. Full keyboard navigation. ARIA labels in progress.

Requirements

OSWin 10 (build 17763+) or Win 11
Architecturex64, x86, or ARM64
Runtime.NET 8.0 Desktop Runtime (bundled)
DependencyWebView2 Runtime (auto-installed)
RAM~45 MB at idle
Disk~25 MB installed

You've been navigating windows
the wrong way for over 40 years.

Alt+Tab was introduced in 1985. Since that day the idea was born, it has barely evolved in four decades. It's still a flat list. You deserve a tool that reflects how you actually think: in contexts, in layers, in intent.