How can I save opened tabs and tab groups in Visual Studio 2012?

Question

I need to have different set of open tabs and tab groups for each of my tasks.

Import and export setting not helping me to do this, neither does this SO question that has been asked similarly but for windows/tools layout - i.e. NOT for the tabs/tab-groups.

How can I save and restore the saved set?

Eaves

Answer 1

Late to the party here but it popped up pretty high in my google search for this kind of thing so I'll drop my find: Save All The Tabs.

Jacey

This is no longer compatible. Breaks on install. – Ornament

This apparently evolved another plugin (same author): Restore Editors – Trope

@JoãoPCBertoldo That is for VS Code, not Visual Studio – Gryphon

Currently not supported on VS 2019+ – Jameyjami

Answer 2

One Marketplace Extension that works with Visual Studio 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019 is the Workspace Manager.

One additional tip: after installing it and adding the toolbar, you might have to restart VS again until it fully works (see Q & A). At least I had to do so in VS 2019 (16.1.3).

Canopy

Needed to restart VS 2017 after adding the toolbar for it to be able to save. – Adjudge

- need to enable it as a toolbar post-installation as per marketplace.visualstudio.com/… - needed to restart twice (as per Q&A there) in the beginning for its save functionality to work – Nucleoside

I installed the Workspace Manager extension and it saved my screen configuration (i.e. which panels I had open: solution explorer etc.) but it didn't save document groups. – Crenation

Answer 3

You can save open documents and later reopen them as a group with the Favorite Documents extension.

Floodlight

Thanks. This greatly help to save opened tabs. But not with the tab groups. – Eaves

@Sergey: Great extension. Still it isn't really usable for me for one reason: I've added all open tabs to a favorite group, but it does not save the group in the order in which the tabs were displayed. For my workflow the tab order is very important. Also the pinned-status is lost, but that would be a minor issue. Would be a winner if the order was maintained! – Intelligencer

This didn't work well for me. It's unable to save groups of tabs. That is all I'm looking for. – Ornament

Answer 4

Really late to the party but ContextKeeper plugin will do the job. Supports VS 2022/2019/2017/2015/2013. I'm the author.

It's an extension to quickly save and restore sets of document tabs and its metadata. The "session", similar to Vim's :mksession command, is defined as:

• last opened/favorites files
• documents (tabs with code) positions, state and order
• tabs groups (including horizontal/vertical orientation)
• remembers line and column for every opened tab
• remembers breakpoints & bookmarks for every opened file

It also has a powerful git integration - automatically saves and restores context when switching between branches.

All contexts are saved to simple JSON files.

Bayles

I tried the ContextKeeper plugin and it's very good. I however don't like that it's listed as "Free" but when the beta version expired, I learned that the personal license costs either $149 with 1-year support, or $349 for lifetime support. That's similar to the price of JetBrains Rider, which is a whole IDE. I know that this took a lot of time to develop, and it's a good product. I'd value it at around $50 (even if i have to buy again every 3 years). There's also no contact information on the website, and as I just came across this post, I am writing my opinion here as a comment. – Silva

Answer 5

If you accidentally came here looking for a VS Code solution, from the same author of Save All The Tabs (for Visual Studio) that MushKov shared in this answer:

1. Restore Editors extension
2. press Ctrl/Cmd+K and Ctrl/Cmd+E to access the editors/tab menu

Europeanize

it's not good enough. developers need to have multiple set of files opened for different task they are working on (lets say different GIT branch). saving/restoring a single set of tabs ain't gonna cut it. – Salter

Answer 6

After going over the answers here, I simply ran a search in VSCODE extensions tab and found something which was working great for me: Tab Groups

After installing the extension you should have an extra icon in VSCODE sidebar which manages saves tabs sessions and the tiny button on the top (with a red arrow which I've painted to point to it) will save the current tabs group with your desired group name.

Salter