Introducing Tabs: Organize Items Within a Single List

You can now add tabs to a list to group items by category, phase, person, or whatever else makes sense. One list, multiple lenses — without spinning up half a dozen separate lists that you never quite manage to keep in sync.

What it looks like

Open any list and you'll see a tab strip just under the title. **All** is pinned on the left, your tabs scroll horizontally, and a **Tabs ▾** menu on the right gives you a one-click jump to any tab without scrolling.

Click a tab and the list filters to just those items. Click All to see everything.

When to use a tab vs. a new list

Some questions to ask yourself:

• Are these items related to the same thing, but at different stages? → tabs (e.g. Backlog, In progress, Done this sprint)
• Are these for different people on a shared list? → tabs (e.g. Mine, Hannah's, Pter's)
• Are these completely unrelated? → separate lists

Lists are still the right home for groceries and side project ideas. Tabs are for the times you keep wanting to write Marketing, Sales, Design, Code in the body of every item — that's the signal.

Adding to a tab

When you're viewing a tab and add an item, it lands on that tab automatically. The placeholder updates so you know what you're doing:

Add a task to Marketing...

Bulk add works the same way. Click Bulk add while viewing a tab and you'll see a callout at the top:

You're adding these new items under the Marketing tab.

Every line you paste in becomes an item under that tab. No extra clicks, no needing to assign tabs one-by-one afterward.

Manage tabs

Open the Tabs ▾ menu and click Manage tabs for a dedicated page where you can:

• Drag the handle to reorder tabs (auto-saves)
• Rename any tab inline
• Delete a tab — its items move to All rather than disappearing
• Add new tabs from the same screen

Renames take a single Save click. Reorders save instantly when you drop.

Why we built it

The real test of a feature is whether it earns its space. Tabs do, because they cut the most common workaround in half: making three lists where one would do, then forgetting which list you put something on.

A todo list works best when there's one place you trust. Tabs let you keep one place and still get the categorization you'd otherwise scatter across multiple lists.

A few small touches

A handful of details we care about:

• The active tab scrolls into view automatically if it's off-screen when the page loads
• Active tab width stays stable when you click into it — no jumping
• Deleting a tab doesn't delete its items — they move to All and you can re-tab them
• Tabs are scoped to the list — same name on different lists is fine, no collisions

What's next

A few directions we're thinking about, depending on what people actually use:

• Bulk-move items between tabs from the Select All bar
• Per-tab item counts on the dashboard
• Color-coding (we've intentionally held off — let us know if you'd actually use it)
• Showing which tab an item belongs to when viewing All

If you've been wishing for tabs for a while, give us a shout and tell us how you're using them. We read everything.

Happy organizing!

The FreeTodoList Team