A short note on how to set up a more beautiful tabline for Emacs.
In Emacs, to show the tabline in the top of the frame, add the following config:
(global-tab-line-mode t)
The default tabline is ugly, it also shows the button to create or delete a tab. To disable those button, add the following config:
(setq tab-line-new-button-show nil) ;; do not show add-new button
(setq tab-line-close-button-show nil) ;; do not show close button
To change the separator between tabs, set the variable tab-line-separator:
(setq tab-line-separator "") ;; set it to empty
To further customize the look of tabs, we can employ the powerline package:
(defvar my/tab-height 22)
(defvar my/tab-left (powerline-wave-right 'tab-line nil my/tab-height))
(defvar my/tab-right (powerline-wave-left nil 'tab-line my/tab-height))
(defun my/tab-line-tab-name-buffer (buffer &optional _buffers)
(powerline-render (list my/tab-left
(format "%s" (buffer-name buffer))
my/tab-right)))
(setq tab-line-tab-name-function #'my/tab-line-tab-name-buffer)
;; tab color settings
(set-face-attribute 'tab-line nil ;; background behind tabs
:background "gray40"
:foreground "gray60" :distant-foreground "gray50"
:height 1.0 :box nil)
(set-face-attribute 'tab-line-tab nil ;; active tab in another window
:inherit 'tab-line
:foreground "gray70" :background "gray90" :box nil)
(set-face-attribute 'tab-line-tab-current nil ;; active tab in current window
:background "#b34cb3" :foreground "white" :box nil)
(set-face-attribute 'tab-line-tab-inactive nil ;; inactive tab
:background "gray60" :foreground "black" :box nil)
(set-face-attribute 'tab-line-highlight nil ;; mouseover
:background "white" :foreground 'unspecified)
The produced tab is shown in the title image. If you want to change the style
of tab from wave to vertical bar, you can use powerline-bar-right and
powerline-bar-left instead.