Support & FAQ

No, and it can't. TidyMerge uses File Explorer's native tab feature, which Microsoft introduced in Windows 11 22H2 (build 22621). Earlier Windows versions have no Explorer tabs to merge into. To check your build, press Win+R, type winver, and press Enter.

Install TidyMerge from the Microsoft Store and you get the full app — every feature — for 7 days. The Store handles the trial timing. When you're ready, convert to the full version from inside the app. Settings and workspaces carry over; nothing is reset.

Refunds for Microsoft Store purchases are handled by Microsoft, not by us. Go to account.microsoft.com → Order history, find the purchase, and request a refund there.

Exclusively on the Microsoft Store. That's deliberate: the Store gives you a clean install with no SmartScreen warnings, automatic updates, and Microsoft-managed payments and refunds.

No. $4.99 is a one-time purchase, and updates arrive free through the Microsoft Store — bug fixes and new features alike. No subscription, no upgrade fees for what you bought. (If we ever build a separate, bigger product down the road, this version keeps working and keeps getting maintained — you never lose what you paid for.)

No. Your purchase is tied to your Microsoft account, not to one computer — so one $4.99 purchase covers your own PCs. Sign in with the same Microsoft account on your other machine, install TidyMerge from the Store, and the purchase comes with you. No per-machine fee, no subscription. One thing to know: your settings and workspaces stay local to each PC — they don't sync between machines — but the license travels with your account.

Yes — just not through the Microsoft Store, which is built for personal use (Microsoft removed business volume-purchasing of paid Store apps back in 2021). For deploying TidyMerge on managed or shared company machines, email support@updogtechnologies.com and we'll set you up with a business license and an installer your IT team can push out (Intune, Group Policy, and the like). Tell us roughly how many machines and we'll work out fair volume pricing. See our Volume & IT licensing page for deployment details.

Two ways:

• Excluded paths — add the folder to the exclusion list in Settings. TidyMerge will never merge or auto-route it.
• Drag it out — if you drag a tab out of a window on purpose, TidyMerge's drag-out detection recognizes that and leaves the new window alone.

Right-click the TidyMerge tray icon and choose pause. New Explorer windows will stay separate until you resume. You can also turn auto-routing off entirely in Settings — the manual merge button and hotkey keep working either way.

Yes. The merge hotkey (default Ctrl+Shift+M) is customizable in Settings, and you can add your own folder hotkeys (for example Ctrl+Alt+1 to open a project folder as a tab). Changes apply immediately — no restart needed.

Every entry in the switcher (Ctrl+Shift+Space) shows its full path, so C:\Clients\Alpha\docs and C:\Clients\Beta\docs are clearly distinct. Pressing Enter selects that exact tab inside its window — not just the window.

In your user profile, as plain JSON you can inspect or back up:

• Settings: %APPDATA%\UpDog Technologies\TidyMerge\settings.json
• Workspaces: %APPDATA%\UpDog Technologies\TidyMerge\Workspaces\ (one file per workspace)

Uninstalling removes them.

Yes. The quick-switcher opens on the monitor your cursor is on, and merging works regardless of which screens your windows are scattered across. If you hit something odd in an unusual multi-monitor setup, please email — those reports are genuinely useful.

Through Windows' own published interfaces: the Shell.Application COM API (which ships with Windows) to enumerate windows and open tabs, and UI Automation to select tabs. TidyMerge doesn't patch, hook into, or inject code into Explorer.

No. No tracking, no analytics, no crash reporting over the network, no accounts. TidyMerge makes no network requests at all. The full details — including exactly which local files it writes — are in the privacy policy. It's short on purpose.

Don't take our word for it — check, in about two minutes:

• Watch the network. Open Resource Monitor (Win+R → resmon → Network tab) or Sysinternals TCPView, then use TidyMerge. You'll see zero connections from TidyMerge.exe.
• Block it. Add an outbound Windows Firewall rule blocking TidyMerge.exe. Every feature still works — nothing it does needs the internet.
• Read the files. Everything it writes is plain text in your AppData folder. Open them; nothing is hidden or encoded.

The full reasoning is in the privacy policy.

Yes. At launch the installer is scanned by 60+ antivirus engines via VirusTotal, and the report link is published here so you can open it and check the results yourself.

You don't have to trust the link, either. The exact installer we publish has this SHA-256:

DE0DEF1ABC11CC0EE2A5227118005A0366F067E08CD900C54D981A60AC8B9190

Confirm the file you downloaded matches by running Get-FileHash in PowerShell, then re-scan it yourself anytime:

Get-FileHash .\TidyMerge-Setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256

No. TidyMerge runs as the current user. It also doesn't read the contents of your files — it only sees the paths of folders open in Explorer, which is what it needs to merge them.

This is the honest reality of building on top of File Explorer: Microsoft occasionally changes its internals, and utilities like TidyMerge have to adapt. TidyMerge is built to detect the signature of a breaking Explorer change and say so plainly instead of failing cryptically.

If you see that message: check the Microsoft Store for a TidyMerge update first (Store → Library → Get updates). If you're already current, email me — Windows-update breakage is treated as a critical bug and patched as fast as Store review allows.

TidyMerge writes a diagnostic log of its most recent run to:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\UpDog Technologies\TidyMerge\last-run.log

Important: the log is overwritten on every run, so copy it somewhere safe before clicking merge again. Then email it along with what you expected to happen. The log contains only the folder paths seen during that run and the actions taken — nothing else.

Add that folder to Excluded paths in Settings so it never happens again. If auto-routing grabbed a window you'd just dragged out, that's a bug in drag-out detection — please email with the steps, because that specific case is one I actively want reports on.