Tabs
Tabs make it easy to explore and switch between different views.
Tabs organize and allow navigation between groups of content that are related and at the same level of hierarchy.
Introduction
Tabs are implemented using a collection of related components:
<Tab />
- the tab element itself. Clicking on a tab displays its corresponding panel.<Tabs />
- the container that houses the tabs. Responsible for handling focus and keyboard navigation between tabs.
Basics
import Tabs from '@mui/material/Tabs';
import Tab from '@mui/material/Tab';
Experimental API
@mui/lab
offers utility components that inject props to implement accessible tabs
following WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices:
<TabList />
- the container that houses the tabs. Responsible for handling focus and keyboard navigation between tabs.<TabPanel />
- the card that hosts the content associated with a tab.<TabContext />
- the top-level component that wraps the Tab List and Tab Panel components.
Wrapped labels
Long labels will automatically wrap on tabs. If the label is too long for the tab, it will overflow, and the text will not be visible.
Disabled tab
A tab can be disabled by setting the disabled
prop.
Fixed tabs
Fixed tabs should be used with a limited number of tabs, and when a consistent placement will aid muscle memory.
Full width
The variant="fullWidth"
prop should be used for smaller views.
Item One
Centered
The centered
prop should be used for larger views.
Scrollable tabs
Automatic scroll buttons
Use the variant="scrollable"
and scrollButtons="auto"
props to display left and right scroll buttons on desktop that are hidden on mobile:
Forced scroll buttons
Apply scrollButtons={true}
and the allowScrollButtonsMobile
prop to display the left and right scroll buttons on all viewports:
If you want to make sure the buttons are always visible, you should customize the opacity.
.MuiTabs-scrollButtons.Mui-disabled {
opacity: 0.3;
}
Prevent scroll buttons
Left and right scroll buttons are never be presented with scrollButtons={false}
.
All scrolling must be initiated through user agent scrolling mechanisms (for example left/right swipe, shift mouse wheel, etc.)
Customization
Here is an example of customizing the component. You can learn more about this in the overrides documentation page.
🎨 If you are looking for inspiration, you can check MUI Treasury's customization examples.
Vertical tabs
To make vertical tabs instead of default horizontal ones, there is orientation="vertical"
:
Item One
Note that you can restore the scrollbar with visibleScrollbar
.
Nav tabs
By default, tabs use a button
element, but you can provide your custom tag or component. Here's an example of implementing tabbed navigation:
Third-party routing library
One frequent use case is to perform navigation on the client only, without an HTTP round-trip to the server.
The Tab
component provides the component
prop to handle this use case.
Here is a more detailed guide.
Icon tabs
Tab labels may be either all icons or all text.
Icon position
By default, the icon is positioned at the top
of a tab. Other supported positions are start
, end
, bottom
.
Accessibility
(WAI-ARIA: https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/tabs/)
The following steps are needed in order to provide necessary information for assistive technologies:
- Label
Tabs
viaaria-label
oraria-labelledby
. Tab
s need to be connected to their corresponding[role="tabpanel"]
by setting the correctid
,aria-controls
andaria-labelledby
.
An example for the current implementation can be found in the demos on this page. We've also published an experimental API in @mui/lab
that does not require
extra work.
Keyboard navigation
The components implement keyboard navigation using the "manual activation" behavior.
If you want to switch to the "selection automatically follows focus" behavior you have to pass selectionFollowsFocus
to the Tabs
component.
The WAI-ARIA authoring practices have a detailed guide on how to decide when to make selection automatically follow focus.
Demo
The following two demos only differ in their keyboard navigation behavior. Focus a tab and navigate with arrow keys to notice the difference, for example Arrow Left.
/* Tabs where selection follows focus */
<Tabs selectionFollowsFocus />
/* Tabs where each tab needs to be selected manually */
<Tabs />
Unstyled
Use the Base UI Tabs for complete ownership of the component's design, with no Material UI or Joy UI styles to override. This unstyled version of the component is the ideal choice for heavy customization with a smaller bundle size.
API
See the documentation below for a complete reference to all of the props and classes available to the components mentioned here.