v0.26.0
v0.26.0 is a tessoa release published on 2026-09-21. This page covers tab management, batch rename rules, window materials, tag imports, file operations and interaction.
For instructions, see Managing tabs, Batch rename, Importing tags from TagSpaces, and Settings overview: Window material.
The kinds of change (New / Improved / Fixed) are explained on the Changelog page. Shortcuts on this page use Windows / Linux notation; on macOS, replace Ctrl with ⌘, except that file redo uses ⌘+Shift+Z, properties use ⌘+I, and folder-size recalculation remains Ctrl+K.
New
| # | Kind | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | New | Tabs can have custom names. Double-click a tab name or choose Rename… from its context menu to edit it in place. Clear the name to restore the automatic name. |
| 2 | New | Pin Tab is available from the tab context menu, with Alt+P, or with g then p in Vim mode. Pinned tabs stay at the beginning, have no close button, and are excluded from Close Other Tabs and Close Tabs to the Right. They stay in place when the horizontal tab bar scrolls. |
| 3 | New | Tabs can be organized into named groups with nine colors. Choose Add Tab to New Group from a tab’s context menu; use Ctrl or Shift to select multiple tabs before grouping them. Click a group header to collapse or expand it, or drag the header to reorder the whole group, move it to another split pane, or create a split while keeping the group together. The active tab uses its group’s background color. Ctrl+W closes all selected tabs, and Esc clears the selection. |
| 4 | New | Tab Bar Position under Settings → Layout offers Top, Left and Right. Each pane has its own tab bar, with the navigation bar above its content. The tab-bar context menu can override the position for that pane or follow the global setting; Global Setting changes the shared preference. Drag the edge of a vertical bar to adjust its width. |
| 5 | New | Auto-Hide Tab Bar under Settings → Layout, or the button at the top of a vertical tab bar, collapses the bar to tiles showing the first character of each title. Hovering expands the bar over the content without moving it; moving the pointer away collapses it again. Both transitions are animated. |
| 6 | New | Switch Tabs on Hover under Settings → Layout is off by default. When enabled, moving the pointer over a tab activates it immediately; this does not apply while dragging. Show Close Button on Tabs is on by default. Turning it off removes both the close button and the space reserved for it. |
| 7 | New | Batch Rename with Ctrl+F2 or the file context menu now combines eight rule types, applied from left to right. Replace supports regular expressions, case-insensitive matching, name or extension scope, and replacing only the Nth match. Affix adds prefixes or suffixes. Number supports a starting value, step, digit count, alphabetic sequences, and ordering by the current view or modification time. Case changes capitalization, and Extension changes the extension. Date uses the modification date, creation date or today, in YYYYMMDD, YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY.MM format. Template uses HaoZip syntax: * is the original name, ### is a three-digit sequence, and \*, \# and \\ insert literal characters. Remove deletes a specified number of characters from a position counted from the left or right. All four views preview the results in the file list. Opening the panel still starts with one regular-expression replacement rule and focuses Find, so the existing Ctrl+F2 → type a pattern → Enter workflow remains available. |
| 8 | New | Batch rename rules appear in a bottom rule band or a right-side dock. Click a rule in the band to edit it, or + Rule to add one. In Details and Icons, a sufficiently wide pane automatically uses the dock, where you can drag cards to reorder rules and drag the divider to change the width. The ⇄ button switches the layout and saves a fixed choice. Rule Panel Position under Settings → Layout offers Auto, Bottom rule band and Right-side dock. The dock is available only in Details and Icons; Columns and Gallery use the bottom rule band. |
| 9 | New | Batch rename rule sequences can be saved for reuse. Open Rule presets from either the bottom rule band or the right-side dock to save the current rules. |
| 10 | New | On supported Windows 11 22H2 or later systems, Window Material under Settings → Appearance offers None, Mica, Mica Alt, Acrylic and Thin Acrylic, with None as the default. The material shows the desktop through the title bar, tab bar and sidebar; Translucent Content Area extends it to the file list. Windows transparency effects must be enabled. When they are off, Turn on Windows transparency effects appears in settings and enables them when clicked. |
| 11 | New | Import Tags from TagSpaces… under Settings → System → Maintenance & Setup imports tags from the .ts folders beside files, including tags on folders. A summary shows affected files, new and merged tags, and entries skipped because their files no longer exist. Tags with the same name merge; existing tessoa colors and hierarchy remain unchanged, while new tags keep their imported colors. Tags in bracketed file names are excluded by default. Enable Also read [tags] from file names (untick anything that is not a tag) to review these entries individually. The import does not modify TagSpaces files, can be undone from the completion notification, and does not create duplicates when repeated. It is available on all three platforms. |
| 12 | New | Pasting clipboard text or an image creates a file in the current folder. Ctrl+V creates Clipboard text.txt without changing line endings, or an image file. Clipboard PNG, JPEG and GIF data is saved without recompression; bitmap data is converted to PNG. The new file is selected and its rename field opens immediately. A number is added if the name already exists. Pasting files retains its existing behavior. Text is supported on all three platforms; images are currently supported only on Windows. |
| 13 | New | Redo repeats the most recently undone file operation. Press Ctrl+Y or click Redo in the notification after an undo. |
| 14 | New | Text fields support undo and redo, including rename fields, the address bar, filters and settings inputs. Use Ctrl+Z to undo, and Ctrl+Y or Ctrl+Shift+Z to redo. |
| 15 | New | On Windows, Alt+Enter opens Properties for the selection, or for the current folder when nothing is selected. Alt+double-click opens the same dialog for an item. macOS opens Get Info with its platform shortcut noted above; Linux does not currently provide this action. |
| 16 | New | Recalculate folder sizes with Ctrl+K runs for the selected folders, or for all subfolders of the current folder when nothing is selected. This manual calculation also works in locations excluded from automatic calculation, such as network and removable drives. |
| 17 | New | On Windows, holding Alt while dragging creates a shortcut. The drop confirmation menu also offers Create shortcut here. |
| 18 | New | Sidebar folder trees support multiple selection and dragging into the main area. Use Ctrl or Shift to select folders, then drag them into a file area, split, tab bar or tab group to open them at the destination. In Vim sidebar mode, v starts visual selection. |
| 19 | New | Layout to Restore at Startup under Settings → Layout → Startup lets you choose a named layout or Last session. |
| 20 | New | Double-Click Non-Name Columns to Go Up under Settings → Keyboard & Mouse is off by default. When enabled in Details, double-clicking a data column, the blank area after a name, or a gap between columns opens the parent folder. Double-clicking the name text still opens the item. |
| 21 | New | Window Size under Settings → System adds a 1366×768 preset and a Custom size input that is always visible. Enter a width and height, such as 1366×768, and press Enter to apply them. |
| 22 | New | On Windows, the Open in Terminal context submenu includes Windows Terminal when it is installed. |
| 23 | New | The Copy to and Cut to context submenus include Recent, using the folder visit history shown in the sidebar’s Recents section. |
| 24 | New | On macOS, .app bundles display their own icons and behave as files, as in Finder. Their type is shown as an application. Choose Show Package Contents from the context menu to enter the bundle’s folders. |
| 25 | New | On macOS, Settings → System → System Permissions shows separate permission states for Desktop folder, Documents folder, Downloads folder and Full Disk Access. A denied permission provides a link to System Settings. Tabs that cannot access a location also explain where to enable permission. |
Improved
| # | Kind | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 26 | Improved | Copy Path now copies paths without surrounding quotation marks on all three platforms. This allows the paths to be pasted directly into file-open dialogs. Use the adjacent Copy Path (Quoted) when quotes are needed for a command or script. Multiple paths are still copied one per line. |
| 27 | Improved | Favorites expand as a folder tree under Settings → Layout → Sidebar is off by default, including after upgrading. Favorites therefore remain a fixed list of saved locations. Enable this setting to restore folder-tree expansion. It is separate from Follow Current Folder in Tree, which controls whether a tree follows navigation. Recents, Places and Storage are unaffected. |
| 28 | Improved | Files created or placed by Paste, Ctrl+V or file redo are automatically selected and scrolled into view after the operation completes. |
| 29 | Improved | Address-bar popups and sidebar search results provide the full file context menu. They support multiple selection, inline renaming and immediate refresh after deleting or renaming. Folders in sidebar search results can also be dragged into the main area. Each result shows its parent folder relative to the search root; direct children show the root name. |
| 30 | Improved | Subfolders expanded within the file list update automatically when files are added or deleted inside them. You no longer need to collapse and reopen the branch. |
| 31 | Improved | Opening a folder from the Start menu or another program activates its existing tab if it is already open in the current window. Repeated requests while the interface is busy no longer create duplicate tabs. Tabs in other windows are not searched. |
| 32 | Improved | Typing directly in the file area starts filtering with a Chinese input method. Composition can begin without switching to English input first or losing the first letter. |
| 33 | Improved | Dragging includes both checked items and the focused row. The first Ctrl-click to add an item to the selection also checks the previously focused row, so the drag includes all highlighted items. |
| 34 | Improved | Holding a navigation key repeats its action. This applies to arrow keys, range selection with Shift, and forward or back navigation. |
| 35 | Improved | In Details, metadata cards appear to the right of the file name, with space between the name and card and their centers aligned vertically. The card moves below the name if there is not enough room on the right. Only hovering over the name text opens it; hovering over the blank space after the name does not. |
| 36 | Improved | On Windows, opening an image in Photos allows the left and right arrow keys to browse other images in the same folder. Previously, Photos treated the opened image as a single item. |
| 37 | Improved | On Windows, dragging files to another program supports selections from multiple folders and shows a thumbnail while dragging. A failed attempt to start the drag now displays a message. |
| 38 | Improved | The centered settings panel adjusts its width and vertical spacing to the window size, leaving more space around it in large windows. |
| 39 | Improved | Tab reordering, group collapse and drag positioning are animated. Wrapped tab bars support dragging between rows. Tab Group Outline under Settings → Appearance draws an outline around each split pane, including its tab bar and content, and is off by default. Tab context menus also offer New Tab, Duplicate Tab and Move to New Window. |
Fixed
| # | Kind | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 40 | Fixed | On Windows, resizing a window no longer briefly flickers icons and text or stretches the previous frame while its edges are dragged. |
| 41 | Fixed | After waking from sleep or a graphics-driver reset, tessoa attempts to restore its graphics device and redraw the window, addressing freezes and startup-failure messages. |
| 42 | Fixed | Previewing large text files with very long lines no longer causes excessive memory use and a crash. Unexpected background-thread failures now display an exit notification with the log location instead of closing silently. |
| 43 | Fixed | Deleting a program that is still running now reports that another program is using the file, instead of showing system error 124. |
| 44 | Fixed | In Icons, enabling original-image decoding no longer causes thumbnails to decode repeatedly and flicker. A notification appears once when graphics memory or the text cache reaches 90% of its budget. |
| 45 | Fixed | Pasted address-bar paths are recognized after removing surrounding quotes, leading or trailing whitespace, and file://. A file path opens its containing folder and selects the file. A path that does not exist produces a message instead of being treated as a search. |
| 46 | Fixed | On Windows, pressing F5 refreshes each subfolder’s size, item count and expansion indicator, including when NTFS has not updated the parent-folder timestamp after a file is added to an empty folder. |
| 47 | Fixed | This PC refreshes available disk space instead of retaining the first value it read. Returning after copying a large file shows the updated capacity. |
| 48 | Fixed | On Windows, third-party context-menu entries remain available after reopening the menu. Their host process no longer crashes on subsequent opens. |
| 49 | Fixed | On Windows, localized folder names from a desktop.ini without a byte-order mark display correctly. |
| 50 | Fixed | Dragging tabs in Settings Tour (experimental) no longer crashes tessoa. This release also fixes tour actions that could affect real files. |
| 51 | Fixed | File metadata cards no longer cover the drop confirmation menu. |
| 52 | Fixed | Quick-bar buttons retain their pressed state until a click becomes a drag or the button is released. A 200 ms visual response after release makes the click easier to see. |
| 53 | Fixed | Multiline rename fields support vertical cursor movement. ↑ and ↓ move to the corresponding position in an adjacent line, and Shift extends the selection. Moving above the first line goes to its start; moving below the last line goes to the end of the text. |
| 54 | Fixed | Clicking a settings category works from nested subpages. The active subpage closes before the selected category opens. |
| 55 | Fixed | Filter fields in Visibility and Custom Commands receive text input correctly, instead of sending it to a different field. |
| 56 | Fixed | Hover highlighting in the Recent context submenu is consistent for folders already open in a tab and other folders. |
| 57 | Fixed | Dragging the inner edge of a vertical tab bar resizes the bar instead of moving the whole window. |
| 58 | Fixed | In Columns, a location denied by system permissions displays a reason instead of leaving the column blank. |
| 59 | Fixed | Input-method candidate positioning follows changes to the input field while resizing the batch rename dock, a split or the window. Microsoft Pinyin may still keep its candidate window in place during composition; this behavior is controlled by the input method. |
| 60 | Fixed | On Windows, dragging archive members from 7-Zip or WinRAR into tessoa no longer produces empty files or fails when those programs extract the items to temporary files at the end of the drag. |
Downgrading
Warning
Back up the configuration directory before downgrading, including config.ini, session.ini and layouts.ini. Version 0.25.0 and earlier ignore the preferences for tab-bar position, auto-hide, pane outlines, switching on hover, close-button visibility, window material and content translucency, rule-panel position, batch rename presets, double-clicking non-name columns to go up, and Favorites tree expansion. The older version removes them when it writes config.ini. After upgrading again, these preferences return to their defaults and saved batch rename presets are lost. Existing favorites, tags and shortcuts remain available.
Older versions also discard custom tab names, pinned states, groups and their names, colors and collapsed states, and each pane’s tab-bar position. New records in session.ini can also prevent older versions from restoring some tabs or split layouts. The startup-layout choice is stored in layouts.ini and is lost when an older version rewrites that file.
See also