54

In a terminal window, I can use File > Open Tab to get two tabs in the same window.
Then, if I move the terminal up to the top of the OS, those two tabs become two separated windows.

How can I merge those two windows back to one (like I had before)?

1
  • For this kind of advanced manipulation of terminals I recommend using Tilix
    – alfC
    Feb 25, 2021 at 19:36

4 Answers 4

74

I don't think that's possible.

What you can do: create a new tab in the window that you want to merge into the first one, then choose the first tab and drag it to that window and close the other window.

The process would look like:

[window] → [[tab][tab]] → [window] [window] → [window] [[tab][tab]] → [[tab][tab]] [window] → [[tab][tab]].

Confused? - Here is a clip showing the process. ;-)

8
  • I'll +1 you if you make that into a video :-D
    – Rinzwind
    May 16, 2011 at 8:49
  • 8
    This solution doesn't seem to work anymore as tabs cannot be moved out of a window as of gnome-terminal 3.22.
    – jnns
    Feb 3, 2017 at 13:53
  • 1
    @Dunatotatos It worked for me when destination window had multiple tabs. Ubuntu 16.04.
    – wisbucky
    Feb 21, 2018 at 21:41
  • 8
    This doesn't seem to work for me on Ubuntu 18.04 / GNOME Terminal 3.28.2 Mar 3, 2019 at 13:56
  • 2
    I can't drag a tab anywhere outside of the current terminal (Ubuntu 20.04).
    – Kvothe
    Mar 10, 2021 at 11:30
25

This might be an old thread but Im adding this incase someone stumbles onto this thread looking for the answer.

  1. Add a new empty tab to the terminal you want to move.
  2. Grab the tab of the terminal you want to move, and drag it to the terminal window you want this terminal in.
  3. Delete the previous terminal window
  4. you should now have the terminals merged back into one
3
  • Tested to work with Xubuntu 16.04.1 and xfce4-terminal 0.6.3.
    – Jaakko
    May 4, 2017 at 11:07
  • 1
    I think this is actually the same solution as htorque's, but this one is easier to understand.
    – wisbucky
    Feb 21, 2018 at 21:42
  • + 1 This worked for me, and was easy to understand.
    – Bogatyr
    Apr 3, 2018 at 11:27
6

Re @greg-kramida's comment on the accepted answer, the gnome-terminal Gitlab says this feature was "disabled in commit 10e164d8 due to an underlying GTK+ bug sometimes causing a crash[...]. We'd be more than happy to re-enable it once that bug is fixed." ("That bug" is still open, but the gnome-terminal bug was closed.)

There appears to be a patch for gnome-terminal in the Debian version of the report but I haven't tried to apply it.

2

If you're already at this stage, you might want to consider Terminator. It's not nearly as scary as its screenshots suggest. It's great for having multiple terminals nested in one physical window. You can have tabs, broadcast (where your input goes to all the terminals) and you can move things around (although, not window-to-window).

I guess the idea with this is, after you get used to it, you never need more than one window.

sudo apt-get install terminator
1
  • 1
    The link is broken.
    – Don Hatch
    Oct 26, 2020 at 19:33

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