Zellij Vertical Tabs

Vertical Tab Bar for Zellij

A zellij plugin that displays tabs vertically on the left or right side of the screen.


Why Vertical Tabs?

Horizontal tab bars become hard to read when you have many tabs - names get truncated and it's difficult to see all your tabs at a glance. A vertical tab bar shows each tab on its own row, making it easy to see all tab names and quickly navigate between them.

Features

• Active tab highlighting - Currently selected tab is visually distinct
• Mouse support - Click any tab to switch to it
• Scroll wheel - Scroll up/down over the tab bar to navigate tabs
• Overflow indicators - ^ +N and v +N for hidden tabs above/below
• Smart viewport - Active tab always stays visible, viewport scrolls automatically
• Status indicators:
  • * - Active tab
  • Z - Fullscreen mode active
  • S - Sync panes mode active
• Tab numbering - Each tab prefixed with its number (e.g., 1:shell)
• Name truncation - Long tab names truncated with ... to fit width
• Tmux-style formatting - Inline color syntax like #[fg=accent]
• Pane title support - Display focused pane's terminal title via {title}
• Activity rows - Optional extra lines under a tab, fed live by an external pipe message (e.g. surface an agent's running tasks)

Requirements

• Zellij v0.40.0 or later
• Rust toolchain (for building from source)

Permissions

This plugin requires the following permissions:

• ReadApplicationState - Required to receive tab information
• ChangeApplicationState - Required to switch tabs when you click them

On first run, zellij will prompt you to grant permissions. Focus the plugin pane and press `y` to grant.

If the permissions popup doesn't seem responsive, you can write to the permissions file directly. On Linux, edit `~/.cache/zellij/permissions.kdl` and add:

"/absolute/path/to/zelli