Tab Tint

An Obsidian plugin that tints tab headers with custom colors, so you can tell open notes apart at a glance.

Why

When you work across several notes at once — researching, cross-referencing, writing — finding the right tab by its title alone is slow. Tab Tint gives each tab a color you assign, so your eyes jump straight to it. What each color means is up to you: you might reserve one for the note you're actively drafting and another for reference material you keep returning to.

A tint means something: each tab remembers which palette slot you gave it. Recolor the slot in settings and every tab wearing it updates — your "reference material" color stays your reference-material color, whatever hex it points at today.

Install

From Obsidian — search for Tab Tint under Settings → Community plugins → Browse, or open its directory listing.

Manually:

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release.
2. Copy them into <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/tab-tint/.
3. Reload Obsidian, then enable Tab Tint under Settings → Community plugins.

Use

Tint a tab — right-click any tab header and pick a color from the bottom of the menu. Each entry shows a swatch of the color it applies.

Clear a tint — right-click a tinted tab and choose Clear tint.

Commands (assignable to hotkeys under Settings → Hotkeys):

Merging never happens automatically — it only runs when you invoke the command, so split panes and deliberate duplicates are safe.

Behavior notes:

• Tints follow a file through renames and moves.
• Tinted tabs are pinned automatically (and unpinned when cleared) — toggle Auto-pin tinted tabs off in settings if you'd rather manage pins yourself.
• Tab text switches between dark and light ink based on the tint, so labels stay readable on any color — or override it with Tab text color in settings (always dark, always light, or a custom color).
• Works in popout windows; sidebar panels are deliberately left untouched.
• Renaming a palette color updates its command name immediately.
• Add and remove palette colors in settings (the palette keeps at least one). Removing a color clears — and, with auto-pin on, unpins — any tabs using it; every other tab keeps its color.
• Hotkeys stay bound to their slot number: a hotkey for Apply tint 2 keeps working as colors are added or removed, and goes dormant if slot 2 itself is removed.

Default palette

Every slot's name and color is editable under Settings → Tab Tint, and colors can be added or removed there; Reset palette restores the defaults above.

A note on Obsidian internals

Obsidian has no public API for styling tab headers, so Tab Tint (like every tab-styling plugin) reads two undocumented internals. These reads are quarantined in tabColors.ts behind null-safe accessors: if a future Obsidian update renames them, tints silently stop applying rather than anything crashing. If that happens, update the plugin — or open an issue and it'll be a small fix.

License

MIT