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Is there any way to make Chrome not display an X button for each tab?

I have two reasons for this:

  1. When I have many tabs open, the X buttons take a lot of screen real estate and make the tab titles shorter.
  2. Sometimes I try to move to a different tab and accidentally close it because I push the X button by mistake. (Again, dense tabs.)

Since I almost always use Ctrl + w to close tabs, I don't really need the close button.

Is there any way to make it go away?

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  • 7
    Frigging unbelievable that Google won't implement a pref to get rid of those cretinous X buttons on every tab, especially considering the importance they seem to ascribe to tabbed browsing. This causes a lot of accidental closing of tabs for me, and makes me more likely to use Firefox for my everyday browsing.
    – Jez
    Sep 14, 2012 at 10:45
  • Exactly the same situation here, except that I use Ctrl+F4 to close a tab...
    – Domi
    Jun 3, 2014 at 9:39
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    middle mouse button will close tab too ;)
    – THESorcerer
    Aug 24, 2015 at 10:40
  • Ctrl+Shift+T will re-open any closed tab. I use that a lot.
    – mrbeers2232
    Oct 13, 2017 at 2:21
  • Related question: superuser.com/questions/704779/…
    – Roland Pihlakas
    Aug 26, 2021 at 2:06

6 Answers 6

Reset to default
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at least I can not see the 'x' when i opened 20 tabs, except for active tab... but that said: no, there is no way of hiding the 'x' except grabbing chromium and changing the source code yourself.

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    Below a certain threshold the X button does disappear, but that threshold is too low for me.
    – Ram Rachum
    Oct 14, 2010 at 13:04
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    Are you intimately familiar with the Chromium project and sure that there is no way?
    – Ram Rachum
    Oct 14, 2010 at 13:05
  • I'm going to agree with Akira here. I am not intimately familar with Chromium Project, but I have used Chrome since it came out. It and Firefox don't allow you to remove the close tab button (x).
    – steve.lippert
    Oct 14, 2010 at 19:35
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    Firefox does, since 2006. kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.closeButtons
    – Mladen Jablanović
    Feb 20, 2013 at 7:37
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You can alternatively use the Vivaldi browser. It is also based on Chromium just like Chrome. It contains all the features that Chrome does plus a lot more.

Vivaldi includes a setting that removes the cross button from the tabs, it also has a built-in Notes system (so you can keep making personal notes while surfing), and all Chrome extensions work with Vivaldi. Most of all they have a great community that actually listen to your feedback.

I switched from Chrome to Vivaldi and never looked back.

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    Gonna try Vivaldi! But man where do devs take these awful names from for their software!
    – BadmintonCat
    Apr 15, 2020 at 4:16
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A possible work around is to add the extension Sexy Undo Tabs so, when you do commit a natural and human error which happens all too often for me, it's easy to recover from. Until the Chromium developers see the light and allow what at least 170 folks want (according to the summarily closed Bug Request which you can star to increase the head count of folks asking for it), it may be your least worst option.

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    I doubt that more stars would catch their attention. I believe I've even seen an issue with a 1000 stars and still being ignored. I use my Google Photos app on Android and ever since I toggled a setting, it doesn't upload photos unless manually triggered. When it comes to fixing bugs, Google devs can be as blind as a bat. However, another option for your solution would be to use the cntrl+Shit+T hotkey in Chrome that will undo a closed tab.
    – Mugen
    Sep 6, 2018 at 16:07
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Google, in their infinite wisdom, removed this option a while ago. Google seems to have started to move the way of Apple: lock everything down, make the UI as simple as possible, remove every option and customization possible, gain complete control over the user experience and the users themselves. Everything I loved about Google just 5 years ago has been thrown out the window.

I have spent many hours searching for a solution to this over many months and have yet to find anything that actually works. As an alternative, maybe try Vivaldi. It is a new Chrome/Chromium based browser that aims to bring back the old customizations and features that use to make made browsers great. It started out kind of shitty, but over the last year they have improved the UI and ironed out a lot of the bugs.

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    You did not answer OP question please edit your answer to provide a solution to OP
    – Sam
    Jun 12, 2017 at 7:07
  • I added a potential solution i had offered in the comments to the main post.
    – Braden Dodge
    Jun 19, 2017 at 1:24
  • New solution: Use Firefox. It's better now! No really, the new FF 57 "Quantum" is like Firefox used to be, but blindingly FAST when compared to anything else out there. Edge is the only other browser that comes close and it's....not ideal :|
    – Braden Dodge
    Nov 17, 2017 at 7:06
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I think Pin Tab can fit your need.When right clicking a tab,choose Pin Tab, the close button has been disappeared and you can close the tab via Ctrl+W.

I do not know whether there is a plugin to remove the close button or not.

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I just found that if you select the left most tab and the press and hold shift and left click the right most tab and then right click and select "pin tabs" it will pin ALL the tabs and remove the "X" from them all :D you can do the same and select "unpin tabs" to reverse this, or just use CTRL+W to close the tabs you

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