A couple tab improvement requests

  • Keyboard shortcut to Create tabs: There is no way to create a tab with a keyboard shortcut. The system-level shortcuts can’t access the command (at least as far as I can tell) and the methods I’ve tried with KeyboardMaestro don’t work reliably.
  • Tabs use Workspace for title: Can the Tab be titled with the active Workspace instead of the draft that is currently open?

I just whipped up a little action to do this for you.

This replicates the “+” for create new tab.

That does not sound like a good idea to me. The draft is the thing being displayed in the tab, not the workspace. The currently selected workspace applies at the window level - you can have a different workspace applied in different windows.

If you want the workspace name showing, then it already shows if you are displaying the drafts list.

I would have suggested that a theme change could have helped, but when a workspace change applies a theme, that theme gets applied across all editors in all windows. Maybe that could be changed to give another visual option, or the active workspace (if any - it is a pro feature, so you can definitely have none) name or icon could be optionally displayed in the status bar?

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Thanks, I modified that Open New Draft in New Tab to open the current draft, works great.

As for the tab titles, I see your point, but here’s the thing: When switching tabs, in most cases I’m switching contexts so what I need to see is the active workspace, not the draft itself. The draft title gives little hint to what other drafts I’m going to have access to when switching to that Workspace.

I posted a version that does exactly that in response to a different tab related question shortly after I posted the one above.

That explains why you want something to match the way you work most, but not all, of the time. But I don’t think there is anything there that does not still get covered by what I suggested.

Until you switch into a workspace, unless you have fore knowledge of the content of the workspace, a draft title cannot tell you what is in a workspace. Individual drafts can appear in multiple workspaces, so there is no primary hook there either.

Exactly this seems like a much more valid use case than anything else.

I’m curious how other people use the tab feature if not to easily access multiple Workspaces. What do you use it for?

Conceptually, tabs on Mac are just windows that you have merged into one shared window – and they are typically only available in document-based apps where a one window == one document, and typically the document title is the window title.

Most apps that have a library like Drafts do not support tabs (like Mail, Notes, Bear, etc.), but rather have one main window, and allow you open items in satellite windows that are not fully functional – e.g. do not have a sidebar that lets you navigate to other items.

The only app I know that handles tabs more similarly to Drafts is Ulysses, with full-fledged workspaces in each window that can also be viewed as tabs. In their case, the do show both the folder and the document title in the window title – but it’s also a slight different case, because they work in folders. Drafts workspaces are not containers like folders where you are in a clear cut container. Workspaces are must more vague conceptually, and can overlap, so I’m not sure it makes as much sense to display that information in the window title.

I will put some more though into it, however.

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Understood and thank you.

OmniFocus (which I use for personal project and task management) has a Perspectives feature that is very similar to Workspaces.

As an example, here is a window with tabs for four Perspectives Inbox, Today — Weekday, Projects — Up Next, and Someday/Maybe

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