Jetbrains equivalent of Vim tabs

Answered

I was wondering if there is an equivalent of vim tabs that I can use within IntelliJ products for context:

 

In vim:

- A tab has 1 or more windows (where we have many tabs)

- A window can have multiple panes which have a file open

 

So in IntelliJ I want a tab 1 that has file A and file B open in a vertical split view, and I want to change to tab 2 which might have file C and file D open and tab 3 has my differential view of all git changed files.

 

Is this possible?

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8 comments
Official comment

Unfortunately, this isn't something that could be solved by IdeaVim - the way the IDE handles tabs and splits belongs to the IDE, and it's not possible to completely replace this.

The closest you can get is to disable tabs in the IDE's editor settings. 

In Vim, the structure is tabs, each of which can contain a screen, which can be split into one or more windows, and windows are a view on a buffer. 

In the IDE, all we have are editors and documents. An editor is the equivalent of a Vim window, and is a view on a document, which can be considered like a Vim buffer. Tabs in the IDE are really just “handles” on an editor. If we hide tabs, then it appears like there is only one window, and switching IDE tabs is switching the buffer in the current window. Splitting tabs is then like splitting windows in Vim (although without the tab's UI “handle” to grab with the mouse, this is a little harder to achieve). However, there is only one “screen” - this scenario does not give us Vim's tab pages, and there is no way for IdeaVim to provide this.

Yup that's what I'm after Andriy Bazanov , I might make an ideavim feature request for this Yaroslav Bedrov 

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I'm not sure I understand what feature you are looking for. In WebStorm, you can split editor tabs vertically/horizontally so that you have multiple files opened in one tab in a split view. Please see 
https://www.jetbrains.com/help/webstorm/2023.2/using-code-editor.html#split_screen
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I know about having a single editor tab with a split containing multiple open files, which I've been using as my goto for Webstorm.

 

But what I am after is having more than one split tab. For example, see the below vim example where I have 1 tab with 2 files open via a split view, and then in my second tab I have a single file open.

 

Is the below possible? Or can we open a feature request for this

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Hello,

It's possible to split down, and then split right - so you'll have 3 splits.

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Josh Piper1505 

  1. Editor area can have multiple split areas (splits), each can have one or more tabs.
  2. You cannot have splits inside the tab.

Here is an example: Selecting tab named “1.php” in the top split (Split #1) will simply make that tab active in that split – it will NOT hide other splits (as I understand you want to have this sort of behaviour, based on your last screenshot).

In other words: splits are primary, tabs are secondary. And you want other way round (as I understand).

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I just started using Intellij - coming from Neovim.  Was looking for this as well. 

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I'm trying this: I hide tabs so that I only see the actual buffer or file content. in that window I can split and lay things out however I want. if I want to simulate a new tab, I open a new editor window with the action ‘Open Tab in New Window’ and in that new window I can lay things out however I want too. Of course this might get convoluted since having different windows might not be that convenient, but in vim I like to organize my tabs as worspaces: each tab handles one task and to accomplish that, I create splits the way I see fit.

with VimIdea there's no way to replicate vim functionality regarding tabs, so I think (at least in my case) this is better than nothing and I still get to organize my tasks as workspaces

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