Disable Tabs Altogether

Feature requests
62

As useful as tabs are, they accumulate quickly and slow down our thinking , distract and clutter our interface, a perfect circumstance to practice procrastination . See estonia’s screenshot above, this outcome is so typical.

Now, i am not totally against tabs, but
prefer stacked tabs. Anyway, to handle better all these tabs on screen, their title needs to be shortened But readable (eg “title abc…”) there is just no point to show super compressed tabs , their place should be in the in dropdown button at the end of the tab row

After selecting a tab from this dropdown button our tab would go ( visually ) replacing the 2nd last tab in the visible tab row

I just wrote a quick snippet, minimal and maximal width of tabs got new values (adjust them, if necessary) , accumulated tabs reappear if you scroll left or right with the shift button pressed, now working for both tab and stacked tab view.

.workspace .mod-root .workspace-tab-header {
    width: 0;
    min-width: 130px;
    max-width: 200px;
}

.workspace-tab-header-new-tab {
    margin-left: 8px;
}

.workspace .mod-root .workspace-tabs.mod-stacked .workspace-tab-container .workspace-tab-header {
  min-width: initial;
}
2 Likes
63

Off topic:
Is there some CSS hack to cause the last (rightmost) stacked tab to come fully in view because it’s always missing a half-inch or so? It’s so frustrating having to drag the scroll bar on the bottom to get full view.

64

Agreed, this is annoying
One way is to click on your note title bar
To answer your question, maybe yes.

65

Clicking on the title bar doesn’t entirely bring the last tab into view. It’s okay with those in the middle.
It would also be nice to grab them by the bar and flick them aside, or something.

66

Ops, i forgot about, i already implemented this in my own theme Dune

But you are quicker if you add the css rule from this post:

1 Like
67

Sweet. I’ll have a look.

Cheers

68

I’m using Obsidian on macOS.

There might be a bug in the Obsidian. In my old vault, after updating the app, I had this pesky problem that when I have clicked a note file, it opened in a new tab. The result was that after a few hours of browsing notes in the Obsidian I had tens of tens tabs opened.

Now, I have closed the old vault and created a new vault. And while having this new vault opened I have opened the old one beside it.

Now it appears as if the note files open in the same tab that is already selected. No more multiple tabs. Is the problem solved? I do not know if this behavior will stay or revert back after some time, but just wanted to share.

Also I have noticed, that although I’m using the same version of the app, when I go to the settings inside the new test vault and the old one, the options in the Quick switcher differ.

In the old one I have three options available. In the new one there are only two visible.

69

Just trash Obsidian and install a brand new copy; the internal updater works well for smaller bugfixes and smaller updates but fails to update properly with breaking changes.

70

For everyone still looking for a way to disable tabs:

I have created a simple plugin that replaces the current tab when creating a new note.

The plugin won’t close pinned (or manually created) tabs which means that you can still use tabs when you need them.

You can find the No Tabs plugin under Community Plugins.
Source Code: No Tabs

2 Likes
71

I have two panels open: source code and view mode. When creating a new note 1) a new tab opens 2) the link between these two panels is lost. Your plugin solves the first problem. It would be great if plugin also link the two panels together.

1 Like
72

Please have any third party plugin talk in a separate convo in share and showcase.

On a side note, in since v1.2.7 there’s in a built in command to create new note in the current tab.

73

Thank you! From the context menu now works as I wanted. However, the button on the toolbar still opens a new tab.

74

that’s not gonna change.

1 Like
75

A very categorical statement. What should I do as a user? In a particular case, I can easily not use this button, but are Obsidian developers always so categorical? Why not give the user the opportunity to customize as he wants?

76

We added the command/hotkey.

You are free to open a FR about the button or somebody can write a plugin. Obsidian has already way too many knobs. This is a minor thing to justfy yet another toggle.

1 Like
77

Tabs in Obsidian do not work properly. Pages sometimes open in a new tab, sometimes in the current tab. Every 20 minutes I spend time closing tabs. Tabs are often repeated. One page can open in ten tabs. I don’t understand the behavior of tabs. I navigate through the file manager, and there all my files are sorted in the way that is convenient for me, and the tabs simply live their own lives and only interfere with my work. Tabs in Obsidian are an annoying feature that is unclear how to use and only gets in the way.

Since this is my first comment on the forum, I want to take this opportunity to thank the developers for a cool application. I really love obsidian, and I don’t want my first comment to be only negative.