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Always Show Tab Close Button

  • 5 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by daniel

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Is there a way to always show the tab close button on the tabs? Or perhaps to show the button on hover of the tab? Chrome does this and I find that very helpful, in cases where I want to close a tab and do not want to re-open that page.

Some context: When you have many tabs open (I know, who does that?) and you want to close some of them, but do not want to select those tabs, currently you can right-click and scroll through the menu to the `Close Tab` option. This is slow and a bit clunky. The `Close Tab` menu option is buried in the bottom-middle of the list.

This issue is somewhat complicated by the fact that I use the excellent Auto-Tab Discard extension to discard/sleep tabs. (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-discard/) So when a tab is discarded, and you click on it, the tab reloads. Which is silly when you just want to close it.

Anyone aware of a way to always show the close-tab button, or show on hover?

Thanks!

Is there a way to always show the tab close button on the tabs? Or perhaps to show the button on hover of the tab? Chrome does this and I find that very helpful, in cases where I want to close a tab and do not want to re-open that page. Some context: When you have many tabs open (I know, who does that?) and you want to close some of them, but do not want to select those tabs, currently you can right-click and scroll through the menu to the `Close Tab` option. This is slow and a bit clunky. The `Close Tab` menu option is buried in the bottom-middle of the list. This issue is somewhat complicated by the fact that I use the excellent Auto-Tab Discard extension to discard/sleep tabs. (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-discard/) So when a tab is discarded, and you click on it, the tab reloads. Which is silly when you just want to close it. Anyone aware of a way to always show the close-tab button, or show on hover? Thanks!

Chosen solution

Note that you can also close a tab by middle-clicking the tab with the mouse wheel.

You can set these two prefs to the same value to show the close button on all the tabs.

WARNING: Changing preferences through this interface not officially supported Hidden settings edited using the about:config tool are explicitly not supported, which means that Mozilla makes no guarantees they will be supported in the future, or that Mozilla will fix them if they break. Mozilla does not test these preferences, and will not in the future. That includes security and performance testing which these preferences may affect.

[Warning added by moderator]


tabClipWidth determines the minimum width of a tab to show the close button. tabMinWidth is clipped to a minimum of 50, so you can't go below this value.

  • browser.tabs.tabClipWidth = 50
  • browser.tabs.tabMinWidth = 50

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All Replies (5)

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Chosen Solution

Note that you can also close a tab by middle-clicking the tab with the mouse wheel.

You can set these two prefs to the same value to show the close button on all the tabs.

WARNING: Changing preferences through this interface not officially supported Hidden settings edited using the about:config tool are explicitly not supported, which means that Mozilla makes no guarantees they will be supported in the future, or that Mozilla will fix them if they break. Mozilla does not test these preferences, and will not in the future. That includes security and performance testing which these preferences may affect.

[Warning added by moderator]


tabClipWidth determines the minimum width of a tab to show the close button. tabMinWidth is clipped to a minimum of 50, so you can't go below this value.

  • browser.tabs.tabClipWidth = 50
  • browser.tabs.tabMinWidth = 50

Modified by Chris Ilias

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Hi Daniel, If you're using a magic mouse, hold the command key and click on each tab you want to close, then control-click on any of them and choose Close Tabs.

If all the tabs you want to close are grouped at the end, control-click on the tab to the left of them and choose Close Multiple Tabs > Close Tabs to Right

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@cor-el that middle button click is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks a bunch! Where did you find that?

Also, thanks for sharing about the browser.tabs config options, very helpful.

@chris thanks for the obligatory warning.

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thanks for sharing that mouse shortcuts link @cor-el, I had not seen that before!