Exactly the same happens for me too. I'm using Leopard (OS X 10.5) with IDEA 6.0.6.

Yes, I get this too. I'm using IDEA 7.0.1 on Leopard. The tab bar just doesn't work properly:

• Sometimes you can't switch between apps
  
• The arrow button that normally drops down a list of extra files just cycles you through them
  
• The right click context menu items don't do what you expect. So 'Close All But This' doesn't and so on....

It seems to be better if you switch to a different non-Mac look and feel, but the GUI looks ugly....

Thanks Chris. I have now switched to the 'Metal' look and feel and the tab bar problems seem to have gone. Anything but the 'Mac OS X' look and feel works. They're all ugly though but 'Metal' is the best of the bunch for me.

Ideally we would get a fix which enables us to use the 'Max OS X' look and feel again. Does anybody at Jet Brains have input on this?

Yeah, sure. At least replacement of drop down for invisible tabs to cycling between them was Apple engineers decision when they've rewrote Aqua look and feel. We can do nothing about it except stop using tabbed pane control and write our own analog.

Same for me (Leopard / IntelliJ 7.0.1).

But I found out, that this only happens, after the tooltip appears!

May be there is a bug in the new leopard tab controll when using long tooltips (the whole filepath)?

The biggest problem for me is that the current file is not reflected in the tabs if the tab is hidden (rather than bringing the tab into view/focus): this makes navigating between files confusing and painful.

I have just found — following the advice to use a different theme — that the "Quaqua" theme does a pretty good OS X look and feel with the addition of sensible tabs (untick the "Settings > Editor > Appearance > Editor tabs in a single row" option for a really clear view of which files are open and what file you are editing).

After working for a couple of hours with Quaqua, it has become apparent that some elements are not rendered properly. Some text boxes such as those on the Search/Replace dialogue box are not high enough (the bottom of the characters are chopped off).

Also, I really like the Alloy look and feel, but not everything renders correctly there either (for example the question mark in a circle help button on several dialogue boxes including the appearance one itself renders as an empty button just a few pixels wide).

It seems that only the Mac OS X look and feel properly renders everything, but then the tabs don't work, which is infuriating! Please JetBrains - make this basic feature a priority to fix!

This should be indeed a priority.


Using the Mac 0S X Look and Feel, it is not possible to habe the tab's on multiple lines (however, the checkbox "Settings > Editor > Appearance > Editor tabs in a single row" is unchecked)

This should be easy to fix, no ?

Definitely a priority. Editing any more than 3 or 4 files is a PITA. Please help on this!

Any change on this?

I most recently tested this problem with the Java for 10.5 Update 1 which includes the 6.0 JVM. It still exhibits the same behavior. I have to imagine this would be a high priority, it makes IDEA very, very frustrating to use.

Same problem here, very annoying.

Also, as was mentioned above, "Editor tabs in single row" checkbox does nothing, they are always in a single row.

The only way I can use IDEA is by keeping a limited number of tabs open, as many as fit. Otherwise it becomes unusable.

Tabs on multiple rows is also an Apple issue? If not, can you please fix at least that?

It's been 7 months since this issue was reported, and it is a major usability issue. Even open source projects are more responsive than this.

Apparently during QA for the 7.0 release not a single tester attempted to open more than about 4 code editors on OSX at a time. Otherwise this would have been noticed. It seems anybody who has used the release in OSX has encountered this critical usability issues within MINUTES of trying to perform the most basic tasks. Assuming Jetbrains performed even the most basic integration tests with OSX and noticed it long ago, how could it be considered acceptable to let the problem persist through not only the major release, but through THREE (soon 4) minor releases?

The IDE is _unusable for editing code_ using OSX's native theme.

I don't know what is worse, the fact that this commercial product is useless on an advertised supported platform, or the fact that there is zero communication from JetBrains on this. Come on people!

Same problem here with 7.0.3 and Selena EAP, I think this is an high priority bug.

Demetrio Filocamo

I always loved IntelliJ, I really like my new Mac, and now THIS...
Please do something it's VERY annoying, confusing and painful!

Can we get some comment from JetBrains on this? Every look and feel that I tried has some sort of problem on the Mac. Even if you don't fix the multiple rows problem, fixing the problem where the current editor is not highlighted in tabs would be a huge help.

I know Apple screwed you, but that isn't any excuse to ignore your paying customers.

I _completely_ agree with all the comments here that this is a major usability issue with IDEA on the mac. I, too, have tried some of the other look & feel alternatives and they all have their foibles and problems.

The problem with the native mac look & feel not always displaying the tab of the current editor content effectively stops you using such actions as the split panes functionality (which I think is only available from the context menu on the specific tab). And the arrows at the end of the tab row do not display a menu of available tabs (as I might expect, as stated in previous comments), but does not bring the hidden tabs into view as the tabs are selected either.

Come on JetBrains - this is a major, _major_ problem that has been dragging on for far too long.

You are right, Stuart. Far, far too long. How can a commercial company let a crippling bug go on for the better part of a year now without even a short term fix or a bandaid?

Our licenses are up for renewal next month. And I'm no longer pulling the trigger on that. Instead, we are switching to Eclipse. While it is different from IntelliJ, at least it works.

So long Jet Brains! In the world of an increasingly smaller and smaller commercial tool market, you think you wouldn't squander your customers.

I would use a different skin for the IDE but I think I have gotten used to horizontal scrolling finally working in Intellij. The other themes don't support this other than the OSX theme. I have noticed that navigating to an off screen tab seems to hang my ide sometimes (trying to reproduce it to get a stack dump now) but like all intermittent bugs it is hard to pin down.

Leopard 10.5.4
IDEA 7.0.4

If you have a tab hidden to the right and you navigate to it with the shortcut keys, the active tab changes, but the tab bar doesn't slide to the right and show the correct active tab. Pretty much useless, so I just have to set my max tabs really low and use the recent files shortcut a lot. Tabs would be nice. Please fix!

The problems with the tab control are caused by bugs in Apple's Swing implementation, and we have no possibility of fixing all of them. Because of that, IDEA 8 no longer uses the standard Swing tab control for editor tabs, and has its own implementation which doesn't suffer from any of the reported problems. Unfortunately there's currently no chance of backporting the new editor tabs to IDEA 7.

FYI the "Java for Mac OS X v10.5 Update 2" does not resolve this issue on IDEA 7.0.4.