Tab switching in Postman Windows

[spaceflight-archite2 (Josh Noe)]

Vote to reopen the below auto-closed topic:

Switching Tabs (Easily)

I’ll preface this post with “I may just be missing something”… I find it next to impossible to easily switch between recently used request tabs in Postman (one of many, many UX gripes - but that’s for a different post). Is there some sort of keyboard shortcut to cycle between recently used tabs? Think “ctrl-tab” “ctrl-shift-tab” like most any other application that supports multiple tabs/windows. Common occurrence - I open up more than a few tabs in one session. So many that the tab nav thing…

This issue is not addressed. As it stands, tabs in Postman are not very useful.

[danny-dainton]

Hey @spaceflight-archite2

Welcome back to the Postman Community!

So that we can accurately assess your individual feedback, can you provide us with the information and points that you find frustrating with user tabs - Any visual examples would also be really helpful.

One of the original points raised was around finding and searching tabs, since this post was created we have made a number of different changes including this feature:

There is also the ability to reassign certain shortcuts to perform certain actions for tabs:

[spaceflight-archite2 (Josh Noe)]

Thanks Danny.

On most modern apps, the primary keyboard shortcuts for tabs cause navigation between tabs in order of most recently viewed.

In Postman, these shortcuts (“Switch to Next Tab” and “Switch to Previous Tab”) navigate between tabs in order of originally opened.

Why is this a problem?
In Postman, every time you open a Request, a new tab is opened and lives forever until you manually close it. When you have Postman open for days at a time, you’ll inevitably end up with dozens of tabs open. These tabs are small, so it’s hard to tell which is which based on the couple of characters shown in each.

Example
Say you’re working on a system that involves four Requests, each in different Collections. You have the scenario above, where many tabs are already open. There is currently no quick way to switch back and forth between the Requests you’re currently working on.

Current Workflow:

1. Force Close all tabs (what if I had something else I was working on that I might want to save?)
2. Open the four Requests.
3. Cycle between them by using the keyboard shortcuts several times to find the one you’re looking for, or by hunting down each one in the Collections view.

Better Workflow:

1. Use keyboard shortcuts to navigate between most recently viewed Requests. Since I’ve been working with these four requests, they’re the ones that I most recently viewed. This is a very natural and standard UX, IMO.

[danny-dainton]

Thanks for the feedback.

@spaceflight-archite2

When you have Postman open for days at a time, you’ll inevitably end up with dozens of tabs open. These tabs are small, so it’s hard to tell which is which based on the couple of characters shown in each.

If you have loads of tabs open, you can still navigate to them using a keyboard shortcut.

There is a tab search/filter feature that can be opened using a shortcut, from here you can filter the open tabs by name or using the navigation arrows, to select the tab you need.

If you were to close all the tabs, you’d also have a recent list within the same feature.

[spaceflight-archite2 (Josh Noe)]

Thanks Danny!

I’ll try out this tab search, but I don’t think it addresses the need to quickly swap back and forth between a few Requests I’m currently working on. Appreciate the idea though!

[danny-dainton]

You can also switch between the number of the tab - if the tabs were 3, 5, 2 and 7 for example, you could use that keyboard shortcut as a means to quickly move between them.

If you could share a visual example and a demo of how you’re using this with a different tool, it would be easier to see what you would like to have in place.

[spaceflight-archite2 (Josh Noe)]

If you could share a visual example and a demo of how you’re using this with a different tool, it would be easier to see what you would like to have in place.

Some tools that switch between tabs by “last used”, rather than Postman’s way:

• VS Code
• Visual Studio
• JetBrains IDEs
• (likely) most other modern IDEs
• Notepad++
• Slack
• Microsoft Teams
• Edge browser
• Surprisingly, Chrome doesn’t, but a lot of users wish that it did

I’ll go out on a limb and say that most modern apps switch between tabs by “last used”. Postman is somewhat of an exception to this UX.

[danny-dainton]

Did you use any of the methods I described in the previous message?

Can you share a video of using those methods in Postman and what’s still not quite right?

I would also still love to see a short video of you using the navigation you described as the best solution on a different tool, rather than a list of tools. It would make things so much easier.

When you don’t provide any visual clues or examples about what you’re describing, it’s still a bit ambiguous and we could be talking about different things.

[spaceflight-archite2 (Josh Noe)]

Looks like this is fixed in version 11.43.4 of Postman, released last week. Clicking a request no longer opens a new tab, so you don’t end up with the sea of a gazillion tabs open.

To use switch back and forth between recently-viewed requests, use alt+left-arrow or alt+right-arrow.

Thanks! This update is appreciated!