Microsoft limiting number of tabs via Alt Tab on Windows 11 to perhaps save system RAM crash

This week, Microsoft released three Insider builds, one for the new Canary channel, one for the Dev Channel, and one (two) more for the Beta Channel as well. As is often the case, these Insider builds can often reveal upcoming features which have not been publicly announced yet. One such addition could be a change to number of tabs Windows 11 will allow when users Alt + Tab. Microsoft is working to limit the number of recent tabs on Windows 11 come Moment 3.

Spotted by Twitter user Xeno, who also happens to be a Windows enthusiast and detective, it looks like Microsoft will be limiting the number of tabs shown when when snapping. On each of the most recent Insider builds (linked in the first line of the article), Microsoft is tweaking the Alt + Tab option inside Settings to now include up to 20 most recent tabs as you can see in the image below:

In previous builds, for example, in build 25314, Microsoft allowed swapping "All tabs" (image below).

The rest of the options remain the same which are "5 most recent tabs", "3 most recent tabs", and "Don't show tabs". As mentioned above, Xeno has noted that all the Insider builds have received the feature which means this option could be rolling out to Moment 3 update.

If we had to guess, Microsoft may be adding this feature to reduce the impact tabs can have on system memory (especially in situations when Sleeping Tabs may be disabled), and sometimes on the lower end processors as well.

Source: Xeno (Twitter)

Source