--- title: "What's new in Lens K8S IDE 2026.10.2: Lens Studio — Lens Blog — Lens" description: "Lens Studio arrives in Lens K8S IDE: split the view to work with tabs side by side, and open any tab in a window of its own." url: https://lenshq.io/blog/lens-release-2026-10-26/ --- [← Blog](https://lenshq.io/blog/) [Lens Release](https://lenshq.io/blog/category/lens-release/) # What's new in Lens K8S IDE 2026.10.2: Lens Studio Yalton Ruiz October 28, 2026 6 min read **TL;DR:** - **Split screen.** Work with tabs side by side, and keep a terminal or logs next to the list they are about. - **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. - **Ask AI arranges your tabs.** Ask for a list beside what you are looking at, or in a window of its own. - **Extensions in every window.** An extension's tabs work in a window of their own too. Lens 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. ## Work with tabs side by side Troubleshooting 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. Split 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. ![The Lens main view split in two groups of tabs: Pods on the left and Deployments on the right](https://lenshq.io/blog/lens-release-2026-10-26/tabs-side-by-side.webp) See how it works in Lens: ![The Lens main view split in two: a Deployments tab is dragged to the right edge, the view splits with Pods on the left and Deployments on the right, and the divider between them is dragged to give Deployments more room](https://lenshq.io/blog/lens-release-2026-10-26/split-screen.webp) There are several ways to split the view: - Click the split icon at the end of the tab strip, or press **Cmd+\** on macOS or **Ctrl+\** on Windows and Linux. - Drag a tab to the left or right edge of the view. - Middle-click a resource in the navigator to open it beside what you are looking at. - Right-click a tab and choose **Move to the left**, **Move to the right**, or **Move to a new group on the right**. Drag 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. ## Open any tab in a window of its own Sometimes 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. ![A Deployments tab moving out of the Lens window into a window of its own, next to the Pods list](https://lenshq.io/blog/lens-release-2026-10-26/tab-to-window.webp) See how it works in Lens: ![A Pods tab dragged out of the tab strip into a window of its own, the window moved over Lens, then the tab put back among the others with Demote as Tab](https://lenshq.io/blog/lens-release-2026-10-26/tabs-in-windows.webp) Drag a tab out of the Lens window, or choose **Open in new window** from: - the tab's menu, - a page in the navigator, such as **Pods** under a cluster, - a link to a list, such as a count on the workload overview. The 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. ## Let Ask AI arrange your tabs Ask 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. Split 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/). ## Ask AI sees what you see Ask 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/). ## More for extensions Every 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. Extensions can do more in this release: - Show a resource's details beside the tab you are in, and add a section to the details of only some resources. - Open a shell into a pod, or the editor for a resource, in the cluster's dock. - Give table columns a starting, minimum, or fixed width, sort by any column, and add a menu to every row. - Keep their settings across restarts when published under an npm scope, such as `@acme/k9s`. - Check, before publishing, that Lens can install and load them, and say what to fix when it cannot. ## Also in this release - 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. - AWS organizations whose policies deny ListRegions can use EKS. Choose **Configure regions** on the profile in **Integrations** to list the regions by hand. - Node shell works on Bottlerocket nodes. - An Ask AI conversation can move to a window of its own, or to an external terminal, and keep going. - AI tools can open in an external terminal of your choice, set under **External Tools** in **Preferences**. - **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. The 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). ## Get the update Lens Studio is available now in Lens K8S IDE 2026.10.2. 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. ## Get Lens K8S IDE 2026.10.2 [See pricing](https://lenshq.io/pricing/) [Download](https://lenshq.io/download/)