{"slug": "what-s-new-in-lens-k8s-ide-lens-studio", "title": "What's new in Lens K8S IDE: Lens Studio", "summary": "Lens released Lens Studio, a Premium Feature of Lens Plus, Pro and Enterprise that adds split-screen tab groups and detachable tabs in windows to the Lens K8S IDE, with the features also included in the 14-day trial. Lens Studio lets users split the main view via the split icon, Cmd+\\ on macOS or Ctrl+\\ on Windows and Linux, drag tabs to the view's edges, or middle-click a resource in the navigator, and open any tab in its own window that persists across restarts. Ask AI can also arrange tabs into split groups or separate windows, and every Lens window now runs every extension.", "body_md": "**TL;DR:**\n\n- **Split screen.** Work with tabs side by side, and keep a terminal or logs next to the list they are about.\n- **Tabs in windows.** Open any tab in a window of its own, move it to another screen, and put it back when you are done.\n- **Ask AI arranges your tabs.** Ask for a list beside what you are looking at, or in a window of its own.\n- **Extensions in every window.** An extension's tabs work in a window of their own too.\n\nLens Studio changes how you lay out your work in Lens K8S IDE. Until now, the main view showed one tab at a time. With this release you see Pods and Deployments at once, follow a rollout in one window while you read its logs in another, and decide where every tab goes.\n\n## Work with tabs side by side\n\nTroubleshooting a Kubernetes workload means looking at several things at once: the Deployment, its Pods, their logs, the events. With one tab in front at a time, you click back and forth and keep the rest in your head.\n\nSplit screen divides the main view into groups of tabs placed side by side. Each group has its own tab strip, so Pods can stay on the left while Deployments stay on the right.\n\nSee how it works in Lens:\n\nThere are several ways to split the view:\n\n- Click the split icon at the end of the tab strip, or press **Cmd+\\** on macOS or**Ctrl+\\** on Windows and Linux.\n- Drag a tab to the left or right edge of the view.\n- Middle-click a resource in the navigator to open it beside what you are looking at.\n- Right-click a tab and choose **Move to the left** ,**Move to the right** , or**Move to a new group on the right** .\n\nDrag a terminal, logs, or any other tab out of the dock to keep it next to the list it is about. It keeps running in its new place. The dock and the status bar follow the side you are working in, and you can drag the divider to give one side more room.\n\n## Open any tab in a window of its own\n\nSometimes one tab deserves a whole screen: a log stream you watch during a deploy, or a list you keep on a second monitor while you work on the first.\n\nSee how it works in Lens:\n\nDrag a tab out of the Lens window, or choose **Open in new window** from:\n\n- the tab's menu,\n- a page in the navigator, such as **Pods** under a cluster,\n- a link to a list, such as a count on the workload overview.\n\nThe window has its own back and forward. **Demote as Tab** puts the tab back among the others. **Cascade Windows** in the **Window** menu lays every window out over the screen you are working on. Lens opens your windows again after a restart.\n\n## Let Ask AI arrange your tabs\n\nAsk AI can open a list of resources beside what you are looking at, or in a window of its own, and move your tabs for you. Describe the layout you want in your own words, and the AI tool in your Ask AI conversation sets it up.\n\nSplit screen and tabs in windows are part of Lens Studio, a Premium Feature of Lens Plus, Pro, and Enterprise, and included in the 14-day trial. On other plans, the split icon and **Open in new window** carry a **PREMIUM** badge that opens the Premium Features page. The step-by-step guides are in the [Lens Studio](https://docs.lenshq.io/k8slens/lens-studio/) docs: [Split screen](https://docs.lenshq.io/k8slens/lens-studio/split-screen/) and [Tabs in windows](https://docs.lenshq.io/k8slens/lens-studio/tabs-in-windows/).\n\n## Ask AI sees what you see\n\nAsk AI can also see the screen of Lens and drive it while you watch, since the previous release. Read how in [See and drive Lens with Ask AI](https://docs.lenshq.io/k8slens/ask-ai/see-and-drive-lens/).\n\n## More for extensions\n\nEvery window of Lens runs every extension, so an extension's tabs work in a window of their own too. An extension can also list and arrange the windows of Lens.\n\nExtensions can do more in this release:\n\n- Show a resource's details beside the tab you are in, and add a section to the details of only some resources.\n- Open a shell into a pod, or the editor for a resource, in the cluster's dock.\n- Give table columns a starting, minimum, or fixed width, sort by any column, and add a menu to every row.\n- Keep their settings across restarts when published under an npm scope, such as `@acme/k9s` .\n- Check, before publishing, that Lens can install and load them, and say what to fix when it cannot.\n\n## Also in this release\n\n- You can upgrade a Helm release that no configured repository publishes. Give the upgrade a chart folder or a packaged `.tgz` , and Lens remembers it for the next upgrade.\n- AWS organizations whose policies deny ListRegions can use EKS. Choose **Configure regions** on the profile in**Integrations** to list the regions by hand.\n- Node shell works on Bottlerocket nodes.\n- An Ask AI conversation can move to a window of its own, or to an external terminal, and keep going.\n- AI tools can open in an external terminal of your choice, set under **External Tools** in**Preferences** .\n- **Open Argo UI** asks which Argo CD to open when a cluster has several, and finds Argo CD installed with the Argo CD Operator, such as OpenShift GitOps.\n\nThe full list of fixes is in the [release notes](https://forums.k8slens.dev/t/release-2026-10-261408-latest-lens-studio-split-view-and-tabs-in-windows/7263).\n\n## Get the update\n\nLens Studio is available now in Lens K8S IDE. Download it, or update from inside the app. Split screen and tabs in windows need a Plus, Pro, or Enterprise plan, or an active trial; see [pricing](https://lenshq.io/pricing/) for plan details.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/what-s-new-in-lens-k8s-ide-lens-studio", "canonical_source": "https://lenshq.io/blog/lens-release-2026-10-26/", "published_at": "2026-10-28 00:00:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-28 12:42:53.577950+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["developer-tools", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["Lens", "Lens K8S IDE", "Lens Studio", "Ask AI", "Lens Plus", "Lens Pro", "Lens Enterprise"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/what-s-new-in-lens-k8s-ide-lens-studio", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/what-s-new-in-lens-k8s-ide-lens-studio.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/what-s-new-in-lens-k8s-ide-lens-studio.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/what-s-new-in-lens-k8s-ide-lens-studio.jsonld"}}