Question about Tab Pinning and Tab Strip Organization

Hi davidwillis,

Your read is close. It is not recency driving it: the multi-row tab strip always brings the row that contains the active tab next to the session view, so selecting a tab in another row promotes that whole row. Pinning sets the tab's position in the tab order, which is why it sits leftmost, but the order is laid out across rows rather than anchored to one. There is currently no setting that locks a row, or that reserves the first row for pinned tabs.

On "sort priority": that one applies to how entries and folders are sorted in the navigation pane. It has no bearing on the session tab strip, so it will not help here.

So the VS / SSMS model you are after, pinned tabs held in a fixed row with the rest of the rows staying put, does not exist today. It is a solid request and worth posting in the feature request section: https://forum.devolutions.net/forums/17/feature-request. That is where our product team tracks them, and the ones that pick up votes from other users are the ones that get planned.

Worth knowing before you update, since multi-row matters to your workflow: the Windows tab bar was rebuilt in 2026.3 on a new rendering path that cannot draw multiple rows, so the multi-row option is gone in that branch. Overflow is now handled by "Shrink tabs to fit" (File > Settings > User interface > Tab bar) plus the tab list dropdown. Multi-row still works on the 2026.2 branch.

Closest workarounds on your current version:

• Per-entry tab color (Properties > User interface), so the sessions you track stay identifiable regardless of which row they are in.
• View > Tab groups for a docked tree of open sessions, or the Opened sessions tab in the navigation pane. Both keep a stable order that the tab strip does not affect.

Which exact version are you on (Help > About), and which workspace type, Devolutions Server, SQL Server, Devolutions Cloud or local? I want to confirm the behavior lines up with your build before you post the request.

Best regards,

Hi Eduard,

Thanks for the response. Sorry I forgot to include the version, it's v2026.1.24. So, multi-row tab has been removed as an option in v2026.3? Why? To me, that is at least much better than trying to shrink tabs to fit (which inevitably leads to them becoming so small you can't see which is which). Removing multi-row tab functionality would seem like a regression...I could see that some people would prefer a bar with an overflow menu (depending how small the tabs were allowed to shrink before overflowing), but multi-row tabs seems like a pretty standard feature now in apps that utilize tabbed windows.

I can post a feature request for the pinning. But, if the plan is to do away with multi-row tabs, that likely also changes how I would even use pinned tabs, so I would have to probably think about it or try out the new functionality a bit , to get an idea of what would work best for my workflow. I suppose if there's only ever one tab row, then pinning to the left of that row (i.e. current behavior) would probably work just fine.

Thanks for the other suggestions as well - I have tried working with the Tab Groups navigation pane which I think could be good but still has some issues to be worked out (I posted another ticket for an issue related to that here , I actually need to reply back on that thread next 🙂 ). If the stability/consistency of that pane's behavior can be improved then I think that might be a good workaround for me (as you probably can guess, I usually have many tabs open). And I've been playing around with tab coloring as well, I agree I think that will help in general with differentiating tabs. But even with that, I would still prefer the multi-row tab functionality (with pinning, ideally..).

Best regards,

Hello David,

I'm very sorry for this regression. We did not purposely remove the Multi-Row tab feature, we have been in the process of converting the RDM app to a new UI framework called Avalonia, this will allow all our RDM apps on all platforms to have the same feature set since they share a cross platform UI layer. Unfortunately it looks like the new Tab component we are using does not support multiple tab rows, and we didn't noticed this lacking feature until this last week. I have logged a ticket for this issue, and I'm trying to find a solution to this problem as soon as possible. We will let you know when we make progress on this, hopefully in the very short term.

Please keep the feedback coming we really appreciate it!

Best Regards,

Paul Dumais

Hi Paul,

Thank you for the details - and no worries, I understand sometimes unexpected things like this can happen. It just caught me by surprise a little since I'd grown quite accustomed to using the multi-row tabs. I could work with the overflow style as well - in fact having an option to maybe combine the two and set a "max limit" of tabs (even with the multi-row), after which the overflowed tabs would go into a dropdown/overflow menu could be helpful. But I think at least retaining the option to utilize the multi-row tabs would be very beneficial.

I really appreciate the heads up though, about this coming down the pipeline in v2026.3.x - because it would've been much more of a surprise if the multi-row tabs just disappeared after upgrading 🙂 . And also appreciate the transparency , providing the details on the reason for the situation. The Devolutions Team has always provided excellent tech support and customer service in my experience, both on the forums and on support calls I've had, as well as being very receptive and responsive to customer feedback. This can be very hard to find nowadays - so I just want to say thanks for that!

I will probably stay on the v2026.2.x build for now, but will definitely stay tuned to the release notes for the v2026.3.x line to see if/when the issue could be resolved/multi-row tab functionality restored.

Circling back to the original issue, I realized I never answered one of @Eduard Sepúlveda López questions about data source type - it is a SQL Server. If the long-term plan (one way or another) is to keep the multi-row tab functionality, then I think my feature request would be to put pinned tabs in their own row (potentially expanding to multiple rows or overflow perhaps if there were a lot of pinned tabs), and that way any non-pinned tabs would rotate but the pinned ones would stay put.

Separately, I might also suggest to prevent the rows from rotating at all (or at least add an option to prevent this, if some people prefer the current behavior), or some way to control the tab row rotation behavior. I understand how some people could want the selected tab's row closer to the session (meaning it becomes the bottom row), but for me it's easier to remember where they are if the rows stay put. Like if tab X is in the top row, then I can always look for it there, regardless of which tab is active. Having those rows constantly rotate based on the active session is what throws me off.

But it sounds like maybe I should wait to see how the multi-row tab thing turns out before posting any specific requests, as that may change the requirements...

Best regards,

Hello David,

Thank you I appreciate the understanding. The good news, is that last night I was able to re-implement the multi-row tabs feature, so it will be released very quickly in our next build 2026.3.6, and even better when we re-implement features it sometimes means we can make them better, so yes, the tab order does not shuffle now when you select a tab, it stays in the same order and the rows don't move. I'm not sure if all users will appreciate this not shuffling (maybe it should be an option), but I will wait to see what other users say first. There may be new unexpected issues with the new multi-row implementation, but from my tests last night the feature seamed to work pretty well.

Best Regards,

Paul Dumais

Hi Paul,

Thank you so much, that's great news! I will definitely give it a try as soon as I can (sorry if my replies are a little delayed, been heads down on a big project lately). I agree making the shuffling an option would be good if some users prefer that behavior. I greatly appreciate the help, and the quick resolution to the "multiple tab row" issues (both the fact they had unexpectedly disappeared in the new version as well as the shuffling issue) - as soon as I get a chance to test it out, I will post back here to let you know how it goes.

Best regards,