When working with a large number of flows, the default tab system quickly becomes hard to manage and doesn't scale very well. I experimented with a small client-side script to improve this, with the following features: Moves flow tabs into a vertical panel above the left palette Adds hierarchical…

A few of us have certainly called for tab-groups in the past. That would be a great addition to Node-RED I believe. Your approach of using naming standards might be interesting though I think that personally I would prefer a full implementation. However, I wouldn't want perfection to get in the way …

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Rethinking Node-RED flow tabs: hierarchical sidebar + grouping

Core Development Feature Requests

jbudd 4 May 2026 11:36 3

Also see https://discourse.nodered.org/t/node-red-5-0-0-beta-6-available/100878/79

Topic		Replies	Views
Feature Suggestion: Tab (Flow) Grouping in Node-RED Feature Requests	2	114	4 July 2025
Group Tabs/Flows General	8	636	6 July 2022
Ability to structure flows General	8	749	15 May 2021
How to Group flows General	6	498	2 March 2023
Feature Request Folder Hierarchical Flow Organization / Folder Structure Feature Requests feature-request	3	162	23 October 2025

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Rethinking Node-RED flow tabs: hierarchical sidebar + grouping

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