Task View is a task switcher and

virtual desktop In computing, a virtual desktop is a term used with respect to user interfaces, usually within the WIMP paradigm, to describe ways in which the virtual space of a computer's desktop environment is expanded beyond the physical limits of the ...

system introduced in

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...

and is among the first features new to Windows 10. Task View allows a user to quickly locate an open window, quickly hide all windows and show the desktop, and to manage windows across multiple monitors or virtual desktops. Clicking the Task View button on the

taskbar A taskbar is an element of a graphical user interface which has various purposes. It typically shows which programs are currently running. The specific design and layout of the taskbar varies between individual operating systems, but generally as ...

or swiping from the left side of the screen displays all open windows and allows users to switch between them, or switch between multiple workspaces. It was first previewed on September 30, 2014 at a Windows 10 press event in downtown

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. A redesigned Task View with support for giving different wallpapers on each desktop has been introduced in

Windows 11 Windows 11 is the latest major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released in October 2021. It is a free upgrade to its predecessor, Windows 10 (2015), and is available for any Windows 10 devices that meet the new Windows 11 ...

Similar features

Similar effects are used on other operating systems and programs like

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

's Mission Control, GNOME 3, and

ChromeOS ChromeOS, sometimes stylized as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS, is a Linux-based operating system designed by Google. It is derived from the open-source ChromiumOS and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user interfa ...

. However, Microsoft has provided a few similar features of its own:

Windows 3.0 Windows 3.0 is the third major release of Microsoft Windows, launched in 1990. It features a new graphical user interface (GUI) where applications are represented as clickable icons, as opposed to the list of file names seen in its predeces ...

first introduced a window switcher in 1990. Using , users could see a flattened view of all open windows. Every version of Windows since then has also provided this window switching functionality.

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

and

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

provide an additional feature called

Windows Flip 3D Compared with previous versions of Microsoft Windows, features new to Windows Vista are very numerous, covering most aspects of the operating system, including Management features new to Windows Vista, additional management features, Security and ...

, which has a broadly similar purpose. Flip 3D allows a user to flip through all open windows with a 3D perspective. A downside to this method is that the front most window covers a significant portion of the other windows. On the other hand, this allows the user to see the contents of the front most window, while this can be difficult in similar applications that show the open windows in a grid, especially if the user has a large number of windows open. Vista's

Desktop Window Manager Desktop Window Manager (DWM, previously Desktop Compositing Engine or DCE) is the compositing window manager in Microsoft Windows since Windows Vista that enables the use of hardware acceleration to render the graphical user interface of Windows ...

exposes a public API that allows any application to access the same thumbnail representations that Flip3D uses, and so there are a number of third party add-ons that are able to provide this functionality in Vista. A very few third-party applications, such as the Emcee Desktop Organizer, provide organization of similar windows into visual "stacks," or support

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for download via MSDN and TechNet on August 15, 2012, and later to ...

's "Immersive" Apps. Microsoft's Intellipoint Software for Microsoft Mice has a similar feature as it also works with live images of windows, rather than a static representations. Additionally, several freeware Windows applications exist to emulate the functionality.

References

{{Windows Components User interface techniques Windows 10 Windows components

Similar features

See also

References