A Win+Tab replacement for Windows 10 & 11 that groups your open windows by application.
Press Win+Tab and get a Task-View-style overlay where every window is clustered into a per-app stack — so 8 File Explorer windows and 6 Chrome windows don't drown out everything else. Live thumbnails, a blurred acrylic backdrop, and your virtual desktops, all on one screen.
Windows' built-in Task View (Win+Tab) shows every window in a flat grid. When you keep a lot of windows open, that grid gets noisy fast. Grouped Task View replaces it with the same fast, full-screen switcher — but windows are grouped by app into stacks, sized to fit on a single screen with no scrolling.
- 🗂️ Group windows by application — one tile per app, multi-window apps become a stack with a count badge.
- 🖼️ Live window thumbnails — real-time DWM previews, sized to each window's aspect ratio (no stretching).
- 🌫️ Acrylic blurred backdrop — a smooth, saturated, frosted blur of your wallpaper.
- 🪟 All virtual desktops — switch to any window on any desktop; a desktop strip with live previews runs along the bottom.
- ↪️ Drag to another desktop — drag a window, or a whole app group, onto a desktop in the strip to move it there (the live thumbnail lifts off and follows the cursor).
- ✏️ Rename groups & custom grouping — right-click a group to rename it, or open Settings to define your own rules (merge several apps into one group, or rename any group). Rules persist across restarts.
- ⌨️🖱️ Keyboard and mouse — arrow keys / Tab to move, Enter or click to switch, click the ✕ to close a window, click a desktop to jump to it.
- 🪶 Tiny and self-contained — a single ~250 KB executable, no runtime or dependencies, no telemetry.
- 🔔 System tray icon — quit anytime from the notification area.
- Download
GroupedTaskView-Setup.exefrom the latest release. - Run it. It installs to your user profile (no admin rights), adds a Start Menu shortcut, starts at sign-in, and launches immediately.
- Press Win+Tab.
The installer is self-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may show a "Windows protected your PC" prompt. Click More info → Run anyway. (A self-signed certificate is not chained to a commercial CA — the binaries are signed, just not by a paid authority.)
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Win+Tab | Open / close the overlay |
| Arrow keys / Tab | Move the selection |
| Enter or click | Switch to the window (or expand a multi-window app) |
| Click the ✕ | Close that window |
| Click a desktop | Switch to it ( ＋ creates a new one ) |
| Drag a tile onto a desktop | Move that window / app group to that desktop |
| Right-click a group | Rename it, or open Settings |
| Esc | Close without switching |
Right-click any group and choose Rename, or open Settings from the tray icon. A rule matches any window whose app name or .exe contains the Match text and places it in the named group. Use one rule to rename a single app's group, or give several rules the same Group name to merge those apps into one group. Rules are saved to %LOCALAPPDATA%\GroupedTaskView\settings.ini.
A low-level keyboard hook (on its own thread, so it's never starved) intercepts Win+Tab before the shell. It enumerates the alt-tab-eligible windows across all virtual desktops, groups them by application identity (executable path, or AppUserModelID for packaged apps), and renders a full-screen overlay with live DWM thumbnails. Virtual-desktop membership comes from the public IVirtualDesktopManager; the desktop list/names/wallpapers are read from the registry.
Requires Visual Studio Build Tools (MSVC) and the Windows SDK. From a Developer Command Prompt:
build.batOutputs build\GroupedTaskView.exe and the all-in-one build\GroupedTaskView-Setup.exe.
Use Settings → Apps → Installed apps → Grouped Task View, or run uninstall.exe from the install folder (%LOCALAPPDATA%\GroupedTaskView). Quit the running app first from its tray icon.
Keywords: Windows Win+Tab replacement, group windows by app, Task View alternative, window switcher, alt-tab grouping, virtual desktops, productivity.