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When many workspace tabs are open, the top workspace bar becomes crowded. The tab strip technically supports horizontal scrolling, but the overflow affordance is hard to discover: the native scrollbar is hidden and the custom scrollbar is only a very thin thumb at the bottom of the tab strip.
As a result, users may not realize hidden tabs are scrollable and may feel that the only practical way to recover space or access earlier tabs is to close visible tabs.
Current behavior
WorkspaceTabs renders open tabs inside a flex-1 horizontal scroll frame.
The native horizontal scrollbar is hidden.
Overflow is represented by a 4px custom scrollbar thumb.
There is no explicit overflow menu, open-tabs list, scroll button, pinned/compact mode, or bulk tab management action.
Users should have an obvious way to navigate, find, and manage tabs after the workspace tab strip overflows.
Possible UI approaches
Add an overflow tabs menu, shown only when tabs overflow. The menu can list all open tabs, highlight the active tab, and allow selecting or closing individual tabs.
Add left/right scroll buttons when overflow is present, scrolling by one tab or one viewport at a time.
Compress inactive tab widths before overflow, while keeping the active tab readable.
Add tab management actions such as Close other tabs, Close tabs to the right, and Close all except pinned.
Longer term: support pinned tabs for frequently used surfaces like Inbox, Review Queue, or key repositories.
Suggested direction
Start with an overflow tabs menu plus basic tab management actions. This keeps the existing scroll behavior, improves discoverability, and gives users a direct way to access hidden tabs without closing unrelated tabs.
Acceptance criteria
When workspace tabs overflow, the UI exposes a visible navigation affordance.
Users can access hidden tabs without closing visible tabs.
Users can manage many tabs efficiently.
The active tab remains easy to locate after opening or switching tabs.
This is a persistent and difficult problem. I don't think browsers handle this very well at the moment.
Currently, we can only use UI indicators to show users that they need to use Shift + Scroll to scroll horizontally.
Currently, the ultimate solutions for browsers have been features like vertical tabs or tab groups. However, I personally doubt whether these are worth implementing in the short term.
Implemented in #28 as the first practical step toward better workspace tab management.
This change improves the current experience by:
adding position-aware overflow fades so horizontal scrolling is discoverable;
increasing tab spacing, height, typography, and control sizing;
making currently open tabs searchable and directly switchable from Ctrl+K;
clearly marking those results as already open and avoiding duplicate repository results.
We also want to acknowledge the limits of this iteration. It does not provide a dedicated overflow menu, pinned tabs, bulk management beyond the existing context-menu actions, or a browser-style vertical tab system. Those remain valid directions for future work if the number and complexity of workspace tabs continue to grow.
For now, #28 closes the immediate discoverability and navigation gap described here. Thanks for the careful review.
Activity
Dustella commentedon Jul 12, 2026
This is a persistent and difficult problem. I don't think browsers handle this very well at the moment.
Currently, we can only use UI indicators to show users that they need to use Shift + Scroll to scroll horizontally.
Currently, the ultimate solutions for browsers have been features like vertical tabs or tab groups. However, I personally doubt whether these are worth implementing in the short term.
Dustella commentedon Jul 12, 2026
Added indicator showing tabs are scrollable
Ctrl Kcan search and jump to tabs45faf95
Dustella commentedon Jul 12, 2026
Implemented in #28 as the first practical step toward better workspace tab management.
This change improves the current experience by:
We also want to acknowledge the limits of this iteration. It does not provide a dedicated overflow menu, pinned tabs, bulk management beyond the existing context-menu actions, or a browser-style vertical tab system. Those remain valid directions for future work if the number and complexity of workspace tabs continue to grow.
For now, #28 closes the immediate discoverability and navigation gap described here. Thanks for the careful review.