Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/sgm1018/BetterWinTab/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
BetterWinTab’s search is built for speed and forgiveness. The moment the overlay is open, you can start filtering without moving your hands to the mouse — just type. The fuzzy matcher tolerates transpositions and skipped characters, so partial or slightly misspelled queries still surface the right window. A search for "gihub" will find a Chrome window titled “github.com/sgm1018” without any special configuration.
Activating Search
Press Ctrl+Tab to open the overlay, then immediately type any letter or digit. BetterWinTab captures the keypress and places it in the search bar automatically — there is no need to click or tab to the search box. Your fingers never have to leave the home row.
Esc to clear the search.
What Gets Searched
Each window is matched against the following fields simultaneously:
| Field | Source |
|---|
| Window title | WindowInfo.Title |
| Process name | WindowInfo.ProcessName |
"google chrome" can match a window where "google" matches the title and "chrome" matches the process name.
Window class names (ClassName) are intentionally excluded from search to avoid false positives — many Electron apps share the class Chrome_WidgetWin_1.
The FuzzyMatcher Service
The FuzzyMatcher static class (Services/FuzzyMatcher.cs) implements an fzf-inspired character-skipping matcher. Calling FuzzyMatcher.Score(text, query) returns:
-1 if the query has no match (not all query characters appear in order in the text).≥ 0 if the query matches — a higher score means a better match.
Scoring Breakdown
The scorer reads through the text left-to-right and tries to consume every character in the query in order. Each matched character contributes +10 to the score. Additional bonuses are applied per match:
| Bonus / Penalty | Amount | Trigger |
|---|
| Base match | +10 | Each matched character |
| Consecutive run | +(consecutive × 5) | Each matched character that continues an unbroken run of adjacent matches |
| Word boundary | +20 | Match at position 0, or immediately after a space, -, _, ., /, or \ |
| Case-exact | +2 | Matched character has the same case as the query character |
| Early first match | +max(0, 50 − firstMatchIndex × 3) | Rewards matches that start near the beginning of the text |
| Length penalty | −(text.Length − query.Length) / 4 | Prefers shorter texts (fewer unmatched characters) |
Exact Substring Wins
FuzzyMatcher.MatchWithFallback(text, query) first checks for an exact substring match using String.Contains (case-insensitive). If found, it returns a score of 1000 + (100 − text.Length), which always outranks any purely fuzzy score. This means typing "VS Code" will rank the VS Code window above fuzzier matches even if those have high character-scoring bonuses.
Multi-Word Matching
FuzzyMatcher.MultiWordMatch(fields[], query) splits the query on whitespace and requires that each word independently matches at least one of the provided fields. If any word matches nothing, the overall result is (false, -1).
// Example: "google crome" against a Chrome window
// Fields searched: Title and ProcessName only (ClassName is excluded)
FuzzyMatcher.MultiWordMatch(
new[] { "Google Gemini - Brave", "chrome" },
"google crome"
);
// "google" → exact match in title field
// "crome" → fuzzy match in process name "chrome"
// Result: (true, combined_score)
Search Modes
When the search bar is active, pressing Tab toggles between two modes:
| Mode | Label | Behavior |
|---|
| All windows | All | Filters WindowInfo objects across all open windows using fuzzy matching |
| Apps mode | Apps | Switches to the app launcher — searches installed Start Menu shortcuts instead of open windows |
Example Scenario
Suppose you have 20+ windows open and want to get back to a GitHub pull-review tab in Chrome:
- Press
Ctrl+Tab — overlay opens on All Windows.
- Type
"ghpr" — the fuzzy matcher finds Chrome windows whose titles contain words like “GitHub”, “pull”, “request”.
- Arrow keys to the right card if needed.
- Press
Enter — Chrome window comes to the foreground; overlay closes.
Total time: under 2 seconds from any app.
Clearing Search
- First
Esc press — clears the search query and restores the folder that was active before you started typing.
- Second
Esc press — closes the overlay entirely.
This two-stage behavior means pressing Esc once never accidentally closes the overlay if you are mid-search.