How to Enable Tabs in File Explorer on Your Windows 11 PC?

Tabs in File Explorer on Windows 11

File Explorer tabs is a new feature on Windows 11. It was first spotted by Rafael Rivera on Windows 11 build 22572, and now it’s officially available on build 25136. On Windows 11 build 22621.160, Microsoft also introduces this new feature.

File Explorer tabs is just like Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome. There is a “+” icon on the top and you can click it to add a new folder. When you open many folders in File Explorer, you can easily switch between two tabs. You can click the “X” icon to close a specific folder. All in all, it will be easy to use your folder when this feature is enabled.

However, the File Explorer tabs feature is still under testing. It is not available to all Insiders in the Windows Insider Program. If you can’t find the tabs in File Explorer on your Windows 11 computer, you can manually enable it. In this post, we will show you two methods.

How to Enable Tabs in File Explorer on Windows 11?

To enable File Explorer tabs on Windows 11, you need to download a tool and use it to do the job. You can follow this guide:

Step 1: Go to the ViveTool download page from Github.

Step 2: Click the ViVeTool vX.X.X.zip file to download this tool on your computer.

Step 3: Go to the download folder and right-click the downloaded tool. Then, select Extract all.

Step 4: On the pop-up interface, you will see a path of a folder. Copy the path to continue.

Step 5: Click the search icon in the taskbar and search for cmd. Then, click Run as administrator from the search result to run Command Prompt as administrator. (>> see how to run Command Prompt as administrator on Windows 11).

Step 6: Type this command cd C:\Users\Administrator\Downloads\ViVeTool-v0.2.1 to Command Prompt and press Enter to run this command. You need to replace C:\Users\Administrator\Downloads\ViVeTool-v0.2.1 with the path you have copied.

Step 7: If you are running Windows 11 Build 22621.160 in the Beta Channel, you first need to type vivetool addconfig 39145991 2 and press Enter to run the command. If you are running build 25136 in the Dev Channel, you can skip to the next step.

Step 8: Type vivetool addconfig 37634385 2 and press Enter. This command is used to enable File Explorer tabs on Windows 11.

Step 9: Type vivetool addconfig 36354489 2 and press Enter. This command is used to enable the File Explorer’s new navigation pane.

Step 10: Restart your computer.

How to Disable Tabs in File Explorer on Windows 11?

If you don’t want to use this new feature, you can disable it. You need to use the steps mentioned above. But only in step 8 and step 9, you need to run these two commands: vivetool delconfig 34370472 2 and vivetool delconfig 36354489 2 in build 25136 in the Dev Channel and run these three commands: vivetool delconfig 39145991 2, vivetool delconfig 37634385 2, and vivetool delconfig 36354489 2 in the Beta Channel. After that, you still need to restart your computer to apply the changes.