P: Reordering tabs in Photoshop is difficult

Report · Jun 23, 2011

Reordering tabs in Photoshop seems a bit inconvenient. To change the order of the tabs you must not move the mouse cursor outside the tab area while holding the left mouse button. If you go outside the tab area, once you go back (while still holding the left mouse button) you can't change the tab order anymore.

It seems a bit inconvenient to focus to keep the cursor in the small tab area to change the order of long tabs.

Report · Jun 24, 2011

Gabriel, are you a tablet user by chance? Do you think making the tolerance to cause a document to detach from a tab group larger would help?

There's a similar issue here for panels:

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh...

Report · Jun 25, 2011

I used to work with a tablet when Photoshop didn't have tabs.

Just found an interesting behavior:

If you drag the first tab over the second one by moving out of the tab area, the tab reordering works.

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works:

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If you drag the second one over the first one, the reordering doesn't work.

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doesn't work:

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This might actually be a bug. I tried moving the second tab before the first one by hovering the first tab in different regions, but nothing happened.

Moving the first tab over/after the second tab always works ok.

Report · Mar 26, 2014

And after 3 years this design flaw still exists. way to go Adobe!

Plus, it's not a bug, it's a design flaw.
When you said it worked by "Moving the first tab over/after the second tab always works ok" - it's still a design flaw.

When you test with more than 3 tabs - when your mouse cursor accidentally moves out of the tab region, the tab you're dragging will ALWAYS be pushed to the right-most spot. Because Photoshop is thinking you're playing with panel/window LAYOUT and by default will always push the panel / window to the end of the stack. Try this with any other panels like "Layers", "Channels", "Paths", "History", and so on. when you try to combine panels together, same thing happens.

There are lots of rooms for improvements, Adobe. Do Something!
Swatch management, Brush management are all a mess. No search functions, no folder to group things together, etc. etc.

Report · Jul 09, 2017

And once more, after another 3 years, this problem still exists.
Well, at least we all know that Adobe isn't doing nothing! 😄

The document tabs should be re-order-able after you detach them from the document bar.
Either that, or there should be some sort of key-shortcut to move the document you're currently working in, to circumvent fixing the problem entirely, as that appears to be a long-standing tradition with Adobe.

Personally, i really appreciate all the work that has gone into photoshop so far, and it is by no means a bad program.
Rather, quite the opposite.
But i truly do feel that, when it comes to user-friendly interface features, there is so much room for improvement still...

I just hope that criticism like this won't be ignored until the eventual heat-death of the universe, since that seems to be what's been happening the last couple of years.

Report · Jul 09, 2017

Really wish you would look into this since Photoshop still doesn't follow the standard and expected behavior of tabs following the order that they've been arranged, not the order they were created.

Just tried keeping the tab perfectly within the tab bar when moving it and it didn't make any difference, the order is still based on tab creation and not tab placement or position.

Report · Jun 20, 2020

Another 3 years down, I'm still googling how to drag one tab that's at the end to the front...

Report · Jun 20, 2020

My goodness. 9 years. I really wish someone in management would schedule in time for these sort of UX fixes. It seems like the programmers only get to work on either new features or critical bugs. Which inevitably means that the number of little bugs and/or design flaws like this just keeps slowly growing over time, as new features are added but never fully ironed out.

Report · Nov 24, 2021

10 years later and they still have not bothered to improve the tabs. I'm working with 62 tabs open and I need to move the last tab to the start, and it's incredibly tedious.

Report · Apr 23, 2022

Anyone else have this problem? I have a large display (4K) and when you try to drag tabs of open files across the tab area, you can't keep a perfect line with your mouse -- because it's too much real estate to cover... SO they pop-out into their own windows. This can be really frustrating. Could we quickly add some simple code so we could hold down SHIFT when dragging them so they don't pop out? I believe a number of us would be really grateful! Thank you!!

Video of this issue: https://saltwatercolourscom-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/mark_simkiss_saltwatercolours_com/EbWJZ...

Report · Apr 25, 2022

really simple to fix this. how do we get this to get attention?

Report · Apr 25, 2022

Do you still work for Adobe, Jeffrey? Still need help here. Thank you.

Report · Aug 22, 2023

August 2023 any solution to this problem?

Report · Sep 17, 2023

We need to get this fixed ASAP!

Report · Apr 05, 2024

It's 2024. Why is this still a problem?

Report · May 06, 2024

I agree with you. Although I have Affinity, I find myself using Photoshop more often. It can be quite frustrating when trying to rearrange tabs, as they always seem to end up at the back of the line if you don't keep them straight. It can be very annoying, to say the least. (lol)