This guide will show you how to disable preview tabs in Atom. This is helpful if you don’t like the temporary nature of the preview tabs. Pretty much you highlight the file and it will show it, then when you click the next file, it will replace the pane with the new file. Personally I do not like this feature, I’de rather double click and have the window open permanently until I close it.
In the example below we see I have highlighted Lorum Ipsum.txt
and that it is showing the preview pane to the right. We can tell this is a preview tab to the right because the tab’s text is in Italics.

We can quickly change this feature by following these steps.
- In the main menu, navigate to
File
>Settings
. - On the left hand menu that appears select
Core
. - Simply uncheck
Allow Pending Pane Items
.
Now that you have unchecked this option, you have now disable the preview tabs in atom. If you would like to turn this back on, just re-check the Allow Pending Pane Items
option in the core settings. Again this really is a user preference setting. Some will love it, others will hate it.
What would you like to learn about Atom next? This application has so many features that we could write articles for days! Especially if we were to dive into the plugins! Let me know in the comments below.
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