Making Google Chrome pinned tabs more compact

Solution 1:

The width of pinned tab is hard-coded in Chromium sources to 61 pixels (in 2011 it was set to 53 pixels).

So you have two options:

1. Customize the width in Chromium sources and recompile it (line 74 in below file).

   File (See line: 74): http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome/browser/ui/cocoa/tabs/tab_controller.mm?annotate=139352

   + (CGFloat)miniTabWidth { return 61; }
   

   Depending on your system, here you have instructions how to build it on Linux, Mac and on Windows.

2. Install the older version of Chromium (before September 2011 [16.0.902.0]), it has 53 pixels instead of 69.

   See the committed changes: http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome/browser/ui/cocoa/tabs/tab_controller.mm?r1=100538&r2=100537&pathrev=100538

   and also related ticket of this change: Issue 96011: Increase width of pinned tabs by 16px

   Some people already asking to undo these changes, so you can try as well, or create a new support ticket.

   Or you could simply download the older version (e.g. 14.0.836.0 from Oct 2011] from here, before this change was applied.

Solution 2:

AFAIK, the tabs shape is the main reason for the space they occupy. Since the ones used by Google Chrome have a trapezoid shape, and the ones from Firefox are rectangular, Firefox saves more space with the same amount of tabs.

This subject has been covered, if we look at this problem from another perspective, at this superuser question, and respective answer.

As one can see from the source code, constants for inset and control points for tab shape are defined in the tab_view.mm file and can't latter on be changed neither by extension or browser settings.

^{at least until the present date.}

The solution could be changing the values and compiling the Google Chrome every time a new release comes out. But I don't see any gain at this.