Vertical tabs ignore "Tab close button position" and hover-only close button is easy to misclick

[lioassu]

Pre-submit Checks

• I have searched Warp bugs and there are no duplicates
• I have searched Warp known issues page and my issue is not there
• I have an issue with AI and have included the debugging ID (Optional, but helps expedite the AI quality fix). Debugging ID instructions
• I have technical issue and have included the logs (optional, but helps expedite the bug fix). Log instructions

Describe the bug

In my daily workflow, I've accidentally closed tabs 3–4 times a day because of this behavior. I'd love to have an option to keep the close button always visible instead of only showing it on hover.

Summary

The Tab close button position setting currently only applies to horizontal tabs. When using Vertical Tabs, the close button always appears on the right side and ignores the configured preference.

Additionally, the close button is only visible on hover, which makes it easy to accidentally close a tab when trying to select it.

Current behavior
Settings → Appearance → Tabs → Tab close button position
Horizontal Tabs: works as expected.
Vertical Tabs: always displays the close button on the right.
The close button only appears when hovering over a tab.
Expected behavior

1. Respect the existing setting

Vertical Tabs should honor the existing Tab close button position setting just like Horizontal Tabs.

For example:

Left → close button appears on the left.
Right → close button appears on the right.
2. Add a visibility option (feature request)

It would also be helpful to make the close button visibility configurable.

For example:

Always
On Hover (current behavior)
Never (close via shortcut or context menu)
Why this matters

With Vertical Tabs, the close button appears only after the pointer enters the tab.

This causes the clickable target to change while moving the mouse, making accidental tab closures more likely. I frequently end up clicking the newly appeared close button instead of selecting the tab.

Keeping the close button always visible (or allowing users to choose) would provide a more stable interaction.

Suggested settings
Appearance
└── Tabs
├── Close button position
│ ○ Left
│ ○ Right
│
└── Close button visibility
○ Always
○ On Hover
○ Never

Thanks for open-sourcing Warp! This would make the Vertical Tabs experience much more consistent with the existing settings and reduce accidental tab closures.

To reproduce

Expected behavior

No response

Screenshots, videos, and logs

No response

Operating system (OS)

Select an OS

Operating system and version

macos13

Shell Version

v0.2026.06.17.09.49.stable_02

Current Warp version

No response

Regression

No, this bug or issue has existed throughout my experience using Warp

Recent working Warp date

No response

Additional context

No response

Does this block you from using Warp daily?

No

Is this an issue only in Warp?

Yes, I confirmed that this only happens in Warp, not other terminals.

Warp Internal (ignore): linear-label:b9d78064-c89e-4973-b153-5178a31ee54e

None

[oz-for-oss]

@lioassu

Here's what I found while triaging this issue:

Thanks for the detailed report and screenshot. The existing close-button position preference appears to affect horizontal tabs only; vertical tabs currently use a separate hover-only action area, so I’m routing this as a tabs/settings bug with a related visibility enhancement request.

Maintainer details

I concluded that vertical tabs appear to use a separate hover-only right-aligned close-button path, so the existing tab close button position setting only affects horizontal tabs while the visibility request is a related enhancement..

Triage summary

This looks like a mixed tabs/settings issue: a bug where vertical tabs do not honor the existing Tab close button position preference, plus an enhancement request to make close-button visibility configurable. The reporter provided visual evidence and a concrete affected workflow, so no additional reporter details are needed for initial routing.

Reproducibility

High. The likely repro path is to enable vertical tabs, set Settings → Appearance → Tabs → Tab close button position to left, then hover a vertical tab. The reported actual behavior is that the close button still appears on the right and only appears on hover.

Likely root cause

The current horizontal tab path reads TabSettings::close_button_position and passes it to TabComponent, which contains left/right close-button overlay anchoring. The vertical tab path uses a separate action-button overlay rendered by render_group_action_buttons, positioned from the top-right of the vertical tab row/group and only included while the row/group or its action buttons are hovered or the menu is open. That path does not appear to consult TabCloseButtonPosition, and there is no existing close-button visibility setting for always/on-hover/never behavior.

Duplicate check

I enumerated all open issues and recent closed issues. Related issues exist for hover-only close buttons or accidental tab closing (for example #3870 and #10995), but I did not find two existing issues that match both the vertical-tabs close-position setting gap and the hover-only vertical-tab close affordance, so this should not be auto-marked as a duplicate.

This is my automated analysis and may be incorrect. A maintainer will verify the details.

Powered by Oz