Automatic Tab Name Display (ATND)

### Description of the new feature / enhancement

Automatic Tab Name Display (ATND) is a proposed PowerToys utility for Windows 11 that shows the active tab or document title in a compact, collapsible strip positioned just above the taskbar near the Start area.

It is intended primarily for browsers and tabbed PDF viewers, where tab captions can become too small to read when many tabs are open. Instead of forcing the user to rely on tiny tab headers or infer the tab identity from page content after switching, ATND would provide a stable, easy-to-read display of the current tab or document title.

ATND should be universal first. The initial version should rely on standard Windows APIs to read the title of the current foreground window so that it can work across many browsers, PDF viewers, Office applications, and other desktop programs without requiring separate integrations for each one.

### Scenario when this would be used?

- A user has many browser tabs open and cannot read the shrunken tab captions.
- A user is working in a tabbed PDF viewer and wants to know which document tab is active.
- A user wants a larger, stable title display near the taskbar while switching among maximized windows.
- A user wants to step left or right through tabs and see each tab title clearly as it changes.

### Supporting information

- When many tabs are open in a browser or tabbed PDF viewer, the visible tab captions shrink to the point where the active tab title becomes hard to read. Users often know roughly where a tab is, but still struggle to identify and select it accurately, and can accidentally hit the close button instead of the tab itself. (See “User problem” in the attached proposal.)

- Keyboard shortcuts such as Ctrl+Tab, Ctrl+Shift+Tab, Ctrl+PageDown, and Ctrl+PageUp help with navigation, but they do not solve the identification problem. They move the user directly into another tab’s content, often at the last scroll position, so the user may still not immediately know which tab has just become active. (See “Problem” in the full proposal.)

- ATND keeps the title near the taskbar in a larger, stable strip that is easier to read at a glance than tiny tab captions, and it does so without modifying any browser or app UI. This aligns with PowerToys’ pattern of lightweight, shell-adjacent utilities.

- Screenshots in this issue show both the inactive state (arrow buttons present on the taskbar but no strip) and the active state (title strip visible above the arrow buttons near Start), to illustrate the intended placement and scale.

- Full proposal with additional background and implementation notes:
https://gist.github.com/madhav-kavuru/d1e96dddcc3b0b54a434b229e6751ca5

### Additional context

I’ve collected the full proposal text, submission draft, and mockup screenshots into a small public repository here for easier reference:

https://github.com/madhav-kavuru/automatic-tab-name-display

Start with the linked full proposal and the PowerToys utility architecture; the issue names no implementation files, entry points, or tests. Define the Windows foreground-window title and taskbar-adjacent UI scope, then establish behavior and validation criteria for the inactive and active states before implementation.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.