README.md

Tabstep

Tabbed Project window for Unity — browse your assets like Windows Explorer.

Tabstep window

The folder view is Unity's stock Project browser hosted inside the window, so search, thumbnails, drag & drop, renaming and context menus all behave exactly like the built-in Project window. On top of it, Tabstep adds:

• Tabs — open any number of folders side by side. Tabs (including their history) survive domain reloads and editor restarts. Drag tab headers to reorder them; tabs of same-named folders show their parent name too (Scripts — Player), and the ▾ button at the right end lists every tab.
• Pinned tabs — right-click a tab to pin it: it moves to the left edge, shrinks to its folder icon and ignores Ctrl+W / middle-click (closing it explicitly via the context menu still works). Close Others / Close to the Right spare pinned tabs.
• Reopen closed tab — Ctrl+Shift+T (or the tab context menu) brings back the last closed tab with its full history; the last 10 are remembered.
• Back / forward history per tab — navigate like a web browser, including with the mouse side (thumb) buttons. Right-click ◀ / ▶ for the full history as a dropdown. Hovering ◀ / ▶ / ▲ while dragging assets spring-loads the navigation, so a drag can walk through the history.
• Middle-click opens a new tab — on a folder in the asset list, on a breadcrumb segment, on ◀ / ▶ / ▲ and on path suggestions, like browser links.
• Per-tab search — each tab remembers its own search filter and restores it when the tab becomes active again. Configurable filter chips next to the search field toggle t: filters with one click.
• Path autocomplete — while editing the path (Ctrl+L), subfolder suggestions drop down under the bar: Tab completes, ↑/↓ select, Enter goes, clicking a suggestion jumps (middle-click: new tab).
• Quick Access — right-click the + button for bookmarked folders and saved searches (a filter pinned to the folder it was made in); add either from that menu or from a tab's context menu. Stored per user and per project in UserSettings/.
• Workspaces — save the whole tab set (order, pins, histories, searches) under a name via the ▾ dropdown and restore it any time.
• Multiple windows — any number of Tabstep windows can coexist, each with its own tabs. From a tab's context menu: Open in New Window opens a copy of the tab (history included) in a new window, Separate Tab moves the tab out and docks it into the layout right beside the current window (floating at its right side when docking isn't possible), and Duplicate Window clones the whole window — every tab, pins and the active tab included.
• Undo asset moves — moved something onto the wrong tab? Undo Last Asset Move in the tab / path-bar context menus puts everything back.
• Open the folder in Explorer — a tab's context menu opens that tab's folder in the OS file browser, and Unity's own Show in Explorer / Reveal in Finder is rewired to open a folder (contents shown) instead of selecting it inside its parent — with nothing selected it acts on the folder you are browsing rather than the project root. Applies to stock Project windows too; toggleable via the Reveal Opens Folders preference.
• Status bar — item count of the shown folder plus the selection's count and file size at the bottom (toggleable).
• Explorer-style address bar — back/forward/up buttons, the folder icon and the current path as clickable breadcrumb segments in a sunken field (hover highlights them; parents that don't fit collapse behind «). Click any segment to jump there, or click the › between segments to pick one of that folder's subfolders, exactly like Explorer's chevrons.
• One single bar instead of three — with Harmony available, the embedded browser's own toolbar (create button + search field) and its Assets > ... path header are removed entirely; the create button and the search field move into the navigation bar and the two freed rows go to the folder view. Stock Project windows are not affected. Toggleable via the Navigation Bar preference (off restores the stock browser chrome).
• Editable path — click the empty part of the address bar, the current folder name, or press Ctrl+L / Alt+D to type or paste a path. Accepts Assets/..., Packages/... and absolute paths inside the project (quotes from "Copy as path" are fine); pasting an asset file path jumps to its folder and pings the asset.
• Copy / paste paths — right-click the path bar for Copy Path, Copy Absolute Path and Paste Path; tabs offer Copy/Paste Path too.
• Pings open a new tab — when something outside the window changes the shown folder (clicking an object field in the Inspector, "Show in Project"), the destination opens as a new tab instead of losing your current place. Navigation inside the window stays in the same tab. Toggleable in preferences.
• Move assets between tabs — drag assets out of the folder view and drop them onto another tab's header to move them into that tab's folder. Hovering a tab for a moment while dragging spring-loads it (switches the view), so you can also drop into a subfolder inside it — just like Explorer.
• Folder drop — drop folders onto the empty part of the tab bar to open them as new tabs.
• Assets > Open in Tabstep — open the selected folder in a new tab.

Tabstep Shelf

A small floating tray for objects in transit (Shelf button in the navigation bar, Ctrl+Shift+D, or YozoLab > Tabstep Shelf). Park assets or scene objects on it, then drag them back out anywhere Unity drag & drop reaches: another tab's folder, an Inspector object field, the Hierarchy, the Scene view.

• Getting things onto it — drop them on the shelf window, drop them on the ▼ Shelf zone that appears at the right end of the tab bar while you drag assets, or use Send Selection to Shelf in a tab's context menu.
• Ctrl+Shift+D summons it — a global, rebindable shortcut (Shortcut Manager: Tabstep/Summon Shelf, with a built-in fallback while the Tabstep window is focused): the shelf jumps to the mouse position, and whatever assets, folders or scene objects are selected get added to it in the same stroke.
• One-shot by default — dragging an item out consumes it: the shelf is a hand-off, not a copy source. Dragging it back before dropping restores it; the behaviour is toggleable in preferences.
• Multi-selection — click selects an item, Shift-click extends the selection, Ctrl/Cmd-click toggles; dragging any selected item carries the whole selection out in one drag.
• Locking — the padlock at the left edge of a row keeps that item on the shelf: locked items survive one-shot drag-outs and Clear, and are restored for the rest of the editor session even if the shelf window is closed.
• Component relay — drop a component (drag its Inspector header) on the shelf, then right-click it to paste a copy onto the selected GameObjects. Right-click also offers ping / select / copy for every item.
• A window like any other — a regular floating editor window: move it by its title tab, dock it anywhere, and it stays above the main window like every floating Unity window. It is saved into the layout, closes with its Tabstep window (unless pinned with the Pin button), and an emptied unpinned shelf closes itself.
• Items are stored as GUIDs / GlobalObjectIds, so they survive domain reloads and restarts; scene objects resolve while their scene is open and grey out otherwise.

Tabstep Inspector (parked)

A tabbed Inspector also exists in the codebase, but it is temporarily withdrawn and invisible in Unity while its integration strategy is reworked in a separate scope — hooking the inspector-opening paths destabilized the editor. The code sits behind the TABSTEP_INSPECTOR scripting define symbol; without that define none of it is compiled, registered or shown.

Usage

Open via YozoLab > Tabstep.

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+T	New tab
Ctrl+W	Close tab (closing the last tab closes the window; pinned tabs are immune)
Ctrl+Shift+T	Reopen the last closed tab
Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab	Next / previous tab
Ctrl+1 … Ctrl+8	Jump to that tab
Ctrl+9	Jump to the last tab
Alt+← / Alt+→	Back / forward
Mouse side buttons	Back / forward
Alt+↑	Parent folder
Ctrl+L / Alt+D	Edit the path (Tab completes, ↑/↓ select, Enter goes, Esc cancels)
Ctrl+F	Focus the search field (when it lives in the navigation bar)
Ctrl+Shift+C	Copy the current folder's absolute path
Ctrl+Shift+D	Summon the shelf to the mouse and add the selection (global, rebindable)
Drag tab	Reorder tabs
Middle-click tab	Close tab
Right-click tab	Open folder in Explorer / pin / quick access / shelf / close others / duplicate / copy & paste path
Right-click +	Quick Access menu
Right-click ◀ / ▶	Full history dropdown
Right-click path bar	Copy path / copy absolute path / paste path / edit path

Preferences live under Edit > Preferences > Yozolab > Tabstep (new-tab folder, new-tab position, navigation bar, status bar, search filter chips, tab title length, middle-click close, mouse side buttons, ping behaviour, reveal opens folders, shelf one-shot).

Harmony (optional but recommended)

Tabstep uses Harmony — when it is present in the project — to remove the embedded browser's toolbar and Assets > ... path header and fold them into its own navigation bar. Harmony is loaded by reflection at runtime: there is no hard dependency, no scripting define, and no setup beyond having 0Harmony.dll somewhere in the project.

• VRChat projects: the VRChat SDK already ships 0Harmony.dll — nothing to do.
• Other projects: download the Lib.Harmony NuGet package, rename the .nupkg to .zip, extract it, and copy lib/net48/0Harmony.dll into your project (e.g. Assets/Plugins/). Alternatively install Lib.Harmony via NuGetForUnity or any other means that gets the DLL into the project.

Without Harmony, Tabstep still works: the browser keeps its own toolbar (create + search stay there), and the redundant path header is blanked out in place instead of being removed — its row remains as empty space.

The patches only affect the browsers Tabstep hosts, and only while the navigation bar is enabled; regular Project windows are never touched.

Notes / limitations

• The embedded browser is shared between tabs. The folder, its history and the search text are kept per tab; the scroll position is not.
• While searching, a search-scope header row appears above the results, just like in the stock Project window; clearing the search removes it again.
• The search field in the navigation bar accepts the stock filter syntax (t:Texture, l:MyLabel, ...); the type/label filter dropdown buttons of the stock toolbar are not replicated.
• Tabstep reaches into Unity's internal ProjectBrowser via reflection (and optionally Harmony). If a future Unity version changes that API the window degrades — to a warning message, or to the stock browser chrome — instead of breaking; tested against Unity 2022.3.

Vibe Coding