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In Firefox/IE (and probably others) there's a Minimum Tab Width.

This is useful when you have a lot of open tabs. They shrink only down to the minimum width but not more.

Firefox - 12+ Tabs

What is the Minimum Tab Width in Chrome/Chromium/Brave ?

Brave - 61 Tabs

How can one increase that ?

This example is about Brave, but a solution for Chrome/Chromium is welcomed.

Background: I routinely use lots (by Chrome's definition) of tabs in a single window on a small 10" touch tablet. I usually have lots of other non-browser windows open at the same time.

Update 1: Found the answers to the first question.

  • At 150% Windows Scaling it's 22.5 pixels per tab:

Brave - 64 Tabs

  • At 100% Windows Scaling it's 13.75 pixels per tab:

Brave - 114 Tabs

After the tabs reach their minimum size, no mechanism besides Ctrl+Tab exists to reach the hidden tabs on the right-hand side.

Petru Zaharia
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  • Wouldn't you mean decrease the minimum width, to allow it to be less wide (like it used to be) and thus fit more tabs on the window? – Keavon May 02 '20 at 22:03
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    @Keavon No, I meant that each tab doesn't shrink below let's say, 100 px, therefore it would mean less visible tabs at any given time on the tab strip (let's say 20 tabs). The extra tabs beyond 20 should lie behind an overflow menu, as in Firefox. – Petru Zaharia May 06 '20 at 14:36

2 Answers2

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In Brave address bar, enter :

brave://flags/

Next, find Tab Scrolling among the available flags and enable it : you can choose from several options (tabs shrink to pinned tab width, tabs shrink to a medium width, tabs shrink to a large width, tabs do not shrink). Then you just have to restart your browser to see the change take effect.

I will not be surprised if this procedure can be reproduced in all chrome type browsers.

zictozin
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    Thanks. It works in Brave and Chrome (here's a [blog entry](https://techdows.com/2020/10/scrollable-tabstrip-for-chrome-lands-in-canary.html) about it). It doesn't work in Edge (even with this [workaround](https://winaero.com/enable-or-disable-scrollable-tabstrip-in-microsoft-edge/)). It seems to interfere with the Vertical Tab feature described in my answer. – Petru Zaharia May 01 '21 at 13:44
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Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) introduced Vertical Tabs back in October 2020. See: How to Enable and Use Vertical Tabs in Microsoft Edge

This solves the problem by having the tab list stacked vertically in an 'infinite' list that one can scroll through, while stil retaining readability of the tab name and usability (especially for touch tablets).

Depending on your version, one may need to enable the #edge-vertical-tabs flags in edge://flags/#edge-vertical-tabs.

Afterwards, one can use the Show vertical tabs button setting under Appearance: edge://settings/appearance

Show vertical tabs button setting

Then use the Vertical Tabs button on the left corner of the title bar:

Vertical Tabs button

Once done, the tabs are stacked vertically on the left side, and you can scroll through the list:

tabs stacked vertically

Petru Zaharia
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