How to open multiple files in tabs on Mac
You can do this with Note My. Here is how to get a whole working set open at once, arrange the strip so you can find them again, and read every marker a tab can show you.
Most work is not one file. It is a config, the script that reads it, the log the script wrote, and two notes you keep going back to. You want them all open, you want to move between them without hunting, and you want the ones that matter to still be there in an hour. This guide covers how tabs work in Note My: how to open them, how to arrange the strip, what each marker means, and what survives a quit.
Every file you open stays on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded, there is no account to make, and nothing about your tabs ever leaves the machine.
Every way to open a tab
There are several ways to make a new tab, and several more to open a file into one. Use whichever your hands are near.
| What you do | What you get |
|---|---|
| ⌘N, the + button, or the toolbar New item | A new untitled tab. |
| Double-click empty space on the tab bar | A new untitled tab, where the click misses a tab. |
| ⌥-click the + button | Diverts to Open, so the same button serves both jobs. |
| ⌘O, or the toolbar Open item | The open panel. |
| ⇧⌘O | File ▸ Open Anything as Text… — forces open a file macOS says is not text. |
| Right-click in the Finder | Note My ▸ Open, or Open in Background to queue files without leaving the Finder. |
A new tab holds nothing in the Finder until you save it — which is not the same as holding nothing. Our auto-recovery safety net looks after unsaved work and offers it back to you on the next launch, so a scratch tab is safe left unsaved. File ▸ New from Template and the toolbar Templates pull-down also open into a new tab; our template library fills in the first few lines for you.
Dragging files in from the Finder
Drag one file or a selection from the Finder onto the tab bar. The bar highlights in the accent colour as a drop target, and each file lands in its own tab. The empty state accepts the same drop when nothing is open yet — its hint line reads "Tip: Drag & drop files here • ⌘O to Open • ⌘N for New" and changes to "Drop to open" mid-drag.
A couple of details are worth knowing before you drop a large selection. The tab bar deals in files, so pick out the ones you want inside a folder and drag those across together — a selection is the precise instrument here, and whatever you highlight is exactly what arrives. A symbolic link opens the file it points at, which makes a folder of links a tidy launcher for a project you come back to. And anything that exists opens, binaries included, so a file macOS is unsure about still arrives as text you can read.
When it is the whole folder you are after, the Finder submenu saves you the drag. Right-click the folder itself, or the background of its window, and choose Note My ▸ Open This Folder. Its ordinary files arrive as tabs in name order, hidden files and packages left where they are, so a folder of scripts or a week of rotated logs comes up in the order you would have read it anyway.
The Finder right-click menu is the more surgical route for a mixed selection. With several files selected it also offers Concatenate & Open, which brings the lot in as one document instead. Reach for it when a set of fragments needs one pass of our find and replace.
Arrange the strip
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Move a tab where you want it
Drag a tab along the bar. It takes a deliberate movement to start the drag, so an imprecise click never nudges your layout. A floating copy follows the pointer, the original dims, and an accent placeholder shows where it will land. A drag starts from the body of an unpinned tab once its title is settled, which leaves the close button and the resize handle free to do their own jobs under your pointer.
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Pin the ones you cannot afford to lose
Pinning does two things: pinned tabs are held at the front of the strip, and a pinned tab refuses to close, beeping instead. It suits anything you would hate to lose to a stray ⌘W. A small pin badge marks it.
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Set the width you want
Drag the right edge of a tab. Width has a floor and a ceiling, so a tab can neither vanish nor swallow the strip. Widths are per tab, so you can leave one long name readable and shrink the rest. Each tab keeps the width you gave it, including after a quit.
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Rename a tab if its filename is unhelpful
Double-click the tab title, or choose Rename… from its context menu, and edit in place. Read the next section first: inline renaming is not only a label change.
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Use the context menu for everything else
Right-click or ⌃-click a tab for a long list of commands, under a header showing the file's icon, name and size. It carries the whole File-menu set — Duplicate Tab (⌃⌘D), Reveal in Finder (⇧⌘R), Copy Path (⌥⇧⌘C) — plus Open in Terminal, and it acts on that tab rather than the selected one.
Renaming a tab versus renaming the file
These are two commands, and the difference matters. Inline rename is not a nickname.
| Inline rename (double-click, or Rename…) | Rename File… | |
|---|---|---|
| What it touches | The label, and the file on disk if there is one. On an untitled tab, the label only. | The file on disk. |
| Where the file can go | The folder it is already in. | Anywhere, through a save panel — a move as well as a rename. |
| If the name is taken | Replace or cancel. Replacing trashes the existing file. | Replace, choose another name, or cancel. |
| With unsaved edits | Renames anyway, without asking. | Asks: save and rename, rename without saving, or cancel. |
Working with a full strip
The tab bar scrolls. Rather than clipping tabs at a hard edge, it fades them out at each end, so a partly hidden tab dissolves instead of being cut in half. The fade on the left appears only once you have scrolled, which is how you can tell there is something behind you.
The scroller is a slim overlay with no track, so it costs no height. A tab that is only partly visible is briefly striped. Selecting a tab from elsewhere brings it to the centre of the strip rather than leaving it clinging to one edge, so the tabs either side of it are readable too.
Reading a tab at a glance
A tab carries several pieces of state, and two are commonly confused.
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| A leading * before the title | Unsaved edits. The same star appears in the window title. ⌘S clears it. |
| An orange dot | The file changed on disk, outside the app. It says nothing about your unsaved edits. |
| Accent fill, white semibold text | The selected tab. Its language icon keeps its own colour through the selection, so you can still tell a Python tab from a CSS one. |
| A pin badge | Pinned. It will not close, and it stays at the front. |
Foo (missing) | The file behind the tab is gone. The tab and its text stay open, no longer tied to a file, and ⌘S routes to Save As so you can put it somewhere new. |
The close button sits at the leading edge and only appears when you hover, which is why the strip stays clean.
The coloured icon is worth using: our advanced language identifier gives every open file the right one, so a full strip sorts itself into scripts, markup and notes at a glance.
What is remembered between launches
Here is what you get back.
- Your tabs. The same files, in the order you left them, each at the width you set, with the same one selected and your pins still in place.
- Your unsaved text. Our auto-recovery safety net brings back work you never saved, with nothing to switch on. If the last run ended badly, that work reopens on its own as
*-prefixed tabs, with no dialog to work through first.
All of it stays on your Mac: no account, nothing uploaded. A file deleted in the meantime still comes back as a tab, marked (missing).
See more than one tab at once
Selecting a tab hands that file the whole window, which is what you want for most of a working day. When the job needs two files beside each other, or the whole set in view at once, three commands cover it.
- Multi View. Every open tab gets its own pane, so the config, the script that reads it and the log it wrote sit on screen together. Work in whichever pane you like; the tab strip stays where it is above them.
- Single View. Collapses the panes back to the selected tab and hands that file the whole window again. Your tabs, pins and widths are exactly where you left them, so you can move between the two views as often as the work needs.
- Compare. Opens our comparison view on two of your open files and lines them up so the differences read straight down the page. It is what to reach for when two copies of the same document have drifted apart and you need to see precisely where.
Pins hold throughout. A pinned tab stays at the front of the strip and keeps refusing to close whichever view you are in, so the file you cannot afford to lose is never one keystroke from gone.
Clear the strip when the job is done
When a piece of work is finished, the tab's context menu clears the strip in one move rather than one ⌘W at a time. Close Other Tabs leaves you with the one you are reading. Close Tabs to the Right and Close Tabs to the Left trim by position, which suits a strip you have built up in order across the morning. Close Saved Tabs takes out everything with no unsaved edits — a clean untitled scratch tab counts as saved and goes with them — and leaves every tab still carrying a star, so the work in progress is the part that survives. Pinned tabs sit out all of them, which is the second half of what pinning buys you.
Troubleshooting
A tab will not close and the Mac beeps
It is pinned, which is the point of pinning. Unpin it from the tab's context menu and close it again. The same beep is why a bulk close can sound several times over — once for each pinned tab it meets.
Closing a tab jumped me to a different file
After a close the left neighbour is selected, even when the tab you closed was not the active one. Close a background tab from its context menu and expect the editor to change under you.
I closed a tab and lost unsaved work
Probably not. Choosing "Don't Save" leaves a short-lived panel reading "Discarded «Foo.swift» — restore?" with a Restore button, so look before you carry on — one click puts the tab back, text and all. An unclean quit is covered separately by our auto-recovery safety net, which offers your unsaved work back the next time you launch.
An orange dot appeared on a tab I was working in
Something outside the app has written to that file while you had it open — a build step, a sync, or a command you ran in Terminal. The text on your screen is untouched, so finish the thought you were on. Reload the tab when you are ready to take the newer copy; reloading never changes the file on disk, so the dot is an invitation rather than a deadline.
I want the strip laid out the same way tomorrow
Set it up once and leave it. Pin the files you work from every day — pinning gathers a tab into the group at the front and it refuses to close from then on — then drag the rest into the order that suits the job and widen the ones whose names you need to read in full. A relaunch hands back the same files in the order you left them, at those widths, with the same tab selected and the pins still holding, rather than re-sorting the strip behind your back.
A tab will not drag
Check three things: the title is out of edit mode, the tab is not pinned, and you are not in compare mode. While our comparison view is open the strip holds still, so the two files you are reading cannot swap places under you. Give the drag a deliberate movement, too — a light click is read as a plain selection, which is what keeps your layout steady all day.
I want a single prompt when I close a lot of tabs
Reach for File ▸ Close All Tabs (⇧⌘W). It asks once for the whole set, offering save all, discard all, or cancel, it stops if a save fails, and any pinned tabs stay open behind it. The bulk closes on the tab's context menu take the unsaved files one at a time instead, which is the route to pick when you would rather decide file by file.
Frequently asked questions
How many files can I have open at once?
The strip is built to take a working set rather than a handful: it scrolls, and fades tabs at each end rather than clipping them, so nothing is cut off no matter how many are open. Our large-file engine keeps the window responsive while a heavy document opens, so one big file does not hold up the rest.
Can I open a whole folder as tabs?
Yes. Right-click the folder in the Finder — or the background of its window — and choose Note My ▸ Open This Folder. It works through the folder's ordinary files in name order, one tab each, and leaves hidden files and packages where they are. When you want a particular set instead, select those files and use the submenu's Open, or drag the selection onto the tab bar; Open in Background queues them without pulling you out of the Finder. The notemy:// URL scheme also has an openfolder verb if you would rather drive the same job from a script or a shortcut. With a crowded folder, pick out the files you actually mean to work on — a strip you can read beats a strip that holds everything.
What does the orange dot on a tab mean?
That the file changed on disk while you had it open, so you know something else has written to it before you save over the top. Your own unsaved work shows separately, as a leading star on the title, and one look at the tab tells you which of the two you are seeing. Reload when you want the newer copy; reloading never changes the file on disk.
If I rename a tab, does it rename the file?
Yes, for a document that has a file, in the same folder, and without asking even when the tab is dirty. Use Rename File… when you want a save panel, another destination, and a prompt about unsaved edits.
Will my tabs come back after I quit?
Yes. The same files come back, in the same order and at the widths you set, and our auto-recovery safety net brings your unsaved text back with them. After an unclean exit, that work reopens by itself, starred.
Can I see two of my open tabs at the same time?
Yes — Multi View gives every open tab its own pane, and Single View collapses back to the selected one. For a line-by-line difference between two of them, use Compare, which opens our comparison view on the pair.