_                    _
  ___ | |__   __ _ _______ | |_
 / _ \| '_ \ / _` |_  / _ \| __|
| (_) | | | | (_| |/ / (_) | |_
 \___/|_| |_|\__,_/___\___/ \__|

tabbedsuckless tabbed interface - usage and patches

git clone https://git.suckless.org/tabbed
make

This patch is necessary to use the patch hidetabs.

  1. Key Release

This patch hides tabs, and will only show them as needed for any tab action.

  1. hidetabs
This patch can conflict with some programs. Eg.: on surf, the keybinding Ctrl-m is effectively disabled and the style can not be toggled.

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Command line options

Ctrl-Shift-[j|k] : move selected tab to the left/right.
-c : close tabbed when the last tab is closed.
-p[s{+-}]N : position for new tabs. s implies a relative position to the current tab.
  +- specify positions from the beginning/end respectively.
-rN : replace arg N with window id instead of sending it at the end.
-d : detach tabbed from terminal and print window id to stdout.

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Ctrl-Shift-Return : new tab
Ctrl-Shift-h : previous tab
Ctrl-Shift-l : next tab
Ctrl-` : open dmenu to open a new tab or filter existing tabs.
Ctrl-q : close tab.
Ctrl-[N] : go to tab N (0-9).
F11 : fullscreen.

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Some programs have options to embed the window into another program.

surf : -e
zathura : -e
urxvt : -embed
st : -w
The -r option can be used for these cases if the window id needs to be sent in a different position.

Run surf opening new tabs after the current tab and closes tabbed after closing the last tab.

tabbed -ps1 -c surf -e
Same example disabling scrollbars to show the use of -r.
tabbed -ps1 -c -r2 surf -e '' -b

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Ctrl-Shift-[j|k] : conflicts with surf zoom.

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- Translate to Spanish.
- See if there is a way to open background tabs.

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suckless, st, surf, zathura
VoidLinux manpages: tabbed(1)
links
- Suckless.org
- tabbed - suckless tabbed interface
- tabbed patches
- tabbed patch - Key Release
- tabbed patch - Hide Tabs

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2026-07-14 : added missing options and fixed examples.
2026-07-06 : Created.

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This document applies to: Linux OpenBSD | 2026-07-14