tab-bar-mode: How to change tab bar appearence?
reddit / emacs

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enzlbtyn · 2022-03-01 21:41

Wanting the tab-bar to look a bit better.

Currently on MacOS. Looking at
[https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html\_node/emacs/Tab-Bars.h
tml](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Tab-
Bars.html)

Can't seem to find anything to change the appearance of the buttons to
make it look better.

Thanks.

https://preview.redd.it/ilupnsbfduk81.png?width=888&format=png&auto=we
bp&s=3cb53064e3739cabff31b1efe2288e0404227c49

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crawsphi · 2022-03-02 00:05

On a Mac you may want to try the "Mac Port" aka railwaycat aka
Mituharu version: https://github.com/railwaycat/homebrew-emacsmacport

It allows Emacs to take advantage of MacOS's built in tabs, so they
match the system chrome, respond to mouse drags, and so on.

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tryptych · 2022-03-02 00:46

If you look in the source (eg `M-x find-library`) you'll find a few
`defface`s.

Here's an [example customisation from
zenburn](https://github.com/bbatsov/zenburn-
emacs/blob/cef1e26146c1b8b32fc5ce346f2cfa9861eb67d4/zenburn-
theme.el#L1492-L1499).

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enzlbtyn · 2022-03-02 02:14

I'm using emacs-plus such that I can have native-comp enabled.

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enzlbtyn · 2022-03-02 02:23

How do you add a face to an existing theme?

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tryptych · 2022-03-02 03:06

You can just add the defface (with your own tweaks) to your init file,
to override the defaults.

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jimehgeek · 2022-03-02 14:16

There's one main function that tab-bar-mode uses to format the tabs,
it's called `tab-bar-tab-name-format-default`. If you `M-x describe-
function` on it, you can see the docs, and look at the source.

You can then define your own function, and set it as the name
formatting function with:

    (setq tab-bar-tab-name-format-function 'my-tab-bar-name-format)

There's also a group variant of this used when tab groups are enabled.

[Here](https://github.com/jimeh/.emacs.d/blob/c845af831690d1ab575b6910
20fbe91ce6435647/modules/workspaces/siren-tab-bar.el#L119-L138) is my
personal format function that I'm using right now. It's pretty basic,
but does what I want: https://share.jimeh.me/Screen-
Shot-2022-03-02-14-08-29.09-PMZkgYQgfYf7.png

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redblobgames · 2022-03-02 15:50

This is for tab-line and not tab-bar but I would expect that a lot of
these customizations would be similar: [blog
post](https://amitp.blogspot.com/2020/06/emacs-prettier-tab-line.html)

[preview image](https://www.redblobgames.com/x/screenshots/emacs-tab-
line.png)

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mclearc · 2022-03-02 21:49

Another thing you might consider (this depends on how many tabs you
usually keep open, etc.) is not displaying tabs in the tab-bar at all
`(setq tab-bar-show nil)` and displaying them in the echo-area
instead. I use a combination of https://github.com/fritzgrabo/tab-bar-
echo-area and https://github.com/qaiviq/echo-bar.el to give a
consistent but very unobtrusive presentation of the tabs in the echo
bar on the bottom right. You can see that in [this image](https://www.
dropbox.com/s/pxv040sow6uwzdv/Screen%20Shot%202022-03-
02%20at%2011.08.10.png?dl=0) -- and my config for it is
[here](https://github.com/mclear-tools/dotemacs/blob/master/setup-
config/setup-tabs.el).

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crawsphi · 2022-03-03 19:36

Understood. For what it's worth, the Mac Port recently merged the 28
branch, so native comp is available there. I have not tried it out
yet, however.