Run multiple programs in one desktop window with TaskSpace

Running multiple PC programs side-by-side isn’t difficult, but can require a little preparation as you move, resize and reorganise each window.

TaskSpace offers an interesting alternative, running multiple programs in a single desktop window, and so making them much easier to manage.

Suppose you’re running Firefox, checking figures on a website, doing some maths on Windows Calculator, and making notes in Notepad. Normally you’d have to arrange each program separately, and they’d add three buttons to your taskbar, along with three thumbnails to Alt+Tab.

Here, all you have to do is drag and drop each program window onto TaskSpace. They’re automatically arranged to fit the space, and then run inside the TaskSpace window. You can use the single TaskSpace taskbar button to access your programs, and Alt+Tab similarly has just one thumbnail to cover every TaskSpace application.

Right-clicking a window title bar when you’re done provides an option to detach that application and run it individually again.

We found this doesn’t always work. Dragging and dropping some programs had no effect; sometimes running TaskSpace as an administrator helped, sometimes it didn’t.

For others, TaskSpace displayed rather technical alerts, for example recommending we "set the environment variable QT_USE_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1" to support VLC Media Player. (It offered to open the correct Windows dialog, but the instruction is still going to baffle many users.)

Even if a program did appear in the window, it wasn’t always usable. Paint.NET docked correctly, but refused to display a File > Open dialog.

The automatic window rearrangement was a problem, too, regularly repositioning windows in a way that we didn’t expect. The title bar right-click menu has an option to turn this off, fortunately.

TaskSpace ran perfectly with other applications, though, so results depend very much on your target software. Fortunately, as it’s free and portable, there’s no penalty in trying the program out, so if you’re interested in the core idea, just grab a copy and see how it works for you.