pre { tab-size: 4 }

[Rich-Harris]

For some unfathomable reason, browsers render tabs as 8 spaces. Even among the minority of developers who agree that tabs > spaces, I've yet to find anyone who thinks that makes sense.

Happily, most browsers allow you to set the tab width with the CSS tab-size property. Adding something like the following to the CSS used on github.com and gist.github.com would make code previews much more readable:

pre {
  -moz-tab-size: 4;
  tab-size: 4;
}

[nschonni]

👍 I find it annoying too. I reached out to GitHub about this when they decided to drop tab characters entirely (now restored). The hack they shared was to add ?ts=4 to the URL to override the value. EX https://github.com/wet-boew/wet-boew/blob/master/Gruntfile.coffee?ts=4

[Rich-Harris]

@nschonni Thanks, didn't know that. Weird that they'd implement that but not have a sensible default! Also, it doesn't work on gist.github.com sadly

[nschonni]

Not to hijack the request, but it would be nice to be able to set your preference in your user profile or by project

[rlidwka]

it would be nice to be able to set your preference in your user profile or by project

+1

[Rich-Harris]

From GitHub:

Hi Rich,

Thanks for your feedback! We're always working to improve GitHub and we consider every suggestion we receive. I've added your idea about changing the tab spacing on GitHub to four to our internal Feature Request List.

We can't say if/when we may add a feature, however your feedback has definitely been recorded.

Cheers,
Steven!

[tobiasvl]

👍

[bevacqua]

👍

[sindresorhus]

I suggested this in early april and got this response from GitHub:

Would you mind adding tab-size: 4; to your
pre {} rule? It makes tab sized indentation
have sane indentation (4 char instead of 8)
in diff views.

We have discussed this many times but we find 8 to be the safest option. Some browsers only support the default, which is 8. Also, changing the default would break repositories that mix spaces and tabs, like ruby/ruby for example.

We haven’t given up on this though. We still want to find a solution, but we need to find a solution that fixes this without creating new problems.

[bkeepers]

We actually do use tab-size in CSS now, but it's still 8 because people get 😠 when you change stuff like that on them.

I just proposed to the team that we persist the ?ts=4 param per-user. So you only have to visit it once and it changes it for you forever. I haven't fully thought through the idea, so maybe it's a horrible idea. But we'll see what the consensus is.

[Rich-Harris]

@bkeepers That sounds to me like a winning solution - grants all the customisability without having to crowbar in extra complexity to the account settings page. Fingers crossed your colleagues go for it. Thanks!

[sindresorhus]

We actually do use tab-size in CSS now, but it's still 8 because people get 😠 when you change stuff like that on them.

Even if it's a good change that most will want? As an example, Facebook has changed their design a lot, people got angry, but in the end everyone got used to it, and most even found it better. Just saying.

[bkeepers]

Even if it's a good change that most will want?

I'm all for changing it then, but we don't really have an easy way to quantify that besides gut feeling. We could take time to research it, but honestly I would rather just make ts sticky and move on to something more productive.

[nschonni]

The way to quantify would be the feedback you received last time you completely replaced tabs with spaces in the diffs and the feedback that got 😉

[tj]

big +1 to changing this it looks ridiculous right now

[narirou]

+1!
Some projects are sharing the information of the tab size by .editorconfig.
If it is possible to apply this information, not break the display that mix spaces and tabs?

[indexzero]

Yes. Please.

[mehulkar]

👍

[sindresorhus]

I made a quick Chrome extension that fixes this: https://github.com/sindresorhus/github-tab-size

Still hoping for GitHub to fix it themselves though.

refined-github also includes a fix for this.

[gwgundersen]

+1

[tj]

thou shalt not have nice tabs

[alganet]

What about reading modelines?

[rlidwka]

supporting .editorconfig is better than modelines, and it was suggested a while ago... still nothing

[f3cuk]

Please change this or give us a good option to do it ourselves. Quantify? What about checking default tab size on decent editors like Notepad++, Sublime. After that check the default tab size on MS 👯

[izaakschroeder]

+1 .editorconfig

[hrasoa]

+1

[genbit]

👍 for ?ts=4 only one time
👍 for .editorconfig

[avitex]

+1

[RReverser]

Hi there, I've just published a browser extension that provides EditorConfig support for GitHub's code viewer and editor:

• Source code
• Chrome
• Firefox

[Alhadis]

@ioquatix What about mobile users, or those whose browsers don't support such a thing?

[ioquatix]

Oh, I totally agree, and I advocate for:

• Per project setting (some projects using hard tabs simply require them to be 8 spaces, they are not a form of variable indentation).
• Per organisation default (if nothing else is configured, use the specified default).
• Per user default (if this is set, it overrides per-organisation defaults).

[natematykiewicz]

@ioquatix Ironically, I found this post by reading some of your code and wishing I could make the tabs be 2 spaces. 😅

[Alhadis]

It's time for my annual "nag GitHub support to add this feature again". This time I was more clear about receiving an explanation. CC'd here for transparency:

Dear GitHub,

I've requested this almost every year since 2015, and will continue to do so: Please add a repository-level setting to change the default tab-width of 8 columns. You added .editorconfig support, but that isn't an adequate solution — you're forcing users to abuse an EditorConfig setting that affects how collaborators can contribute to their repository.

The whole point of semantic tab-use is to enable others to read your code with the indentation-size they're most comfortable with. This might be simple preference, or a product of physical constraints such as screen- or font-size. By requiring indent_size = 4 to override an unwieldy historical default, you're taking this benefit away from users whose codebases are formatted with accessibility in mind.

PLEASE add a repository-level setting for this. It's a simple case of adding the following CSS to a page's header:

<style>
	/* Replace `8` with configured repository setting */
	:root{
		--tab-size: 8;
	}

	/* Add any other selectors styled with `white-space: pre;` */
	.blob-code-inner, pre, code, tt {
		-moz-tab-size: var(--tab-size);
		tab-size:      var(--tab-size);
	}
</style>

The solution above uses a CSS variable that can be overridden in specific elements by adding style="--tab-size: 4", if such a thing is needed.

If there's a reason GitHub staff refuse to add this feature, please e-mail me the official explanation.

Punting this as "low priority" is absurd when it takes very little effort to add, and many users have requested it time and time again… for years.

Moreover, you listened to my incessant nagging about adding 1-pixel dividers between language-colours in repository stat-bars, which is no less complicated (and far more trivial) than adding a tab-size feature.

Yours,
⸻ @Alhadis

[ioquatix]

One way to get GitHub to move on this might be to implement a similar feature in GitLab...

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/26768

I'm going to take a stab at it if I have time.

[maximal]

One way to get GitHub to move on this might be to implement a similar feature in GitLab...

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/26768

Yes, guys, comment and upvote there!

[melgu]

This also applies to Markdown previews.
For those not even the ?ts=4 trick works.

Bitbucket handles tabs correctly, by the way.

[RomainLanz]

Any news on this feature?

[Primajin]

Since Github offers things like setting emoji color and theme in here: https://github.com/settings/appearance this should be the right place to also set preferred tab size.

[AverageHelper]

Since I just found this, and I don't know if it's been posted already, and I think it makes relevant arguments, I'll link this Reddit post.

TL;DR:
There is a significant population of developers and potential developers with visual impairments who rely on editor-level tab-size configuration to do their work. The fact that GitHub et al do not permit this sort of configuration is a pain point for them.

+1 for adding an optional user-level tab-width config. Bonus points to actively recommend that new repos use tabs.

[Rybec]

I just want to express my desire for a repo level tab setting that does not require pushing contributors to use that same setting in their own editors. I go to great effort to make sure my code looks right in any tab setting (tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment), but I want the Github presentation to be 4 character widths for tabs. Tabs more than 4 characters wide rapidly push code so far to the right that it can become a serious problem for readability.

[GregWoods]

just created my first gist. Yay!
But wait, what the hell is wrong with formatting?
Ah wait there's an open issue for this.
But it is 7 years old
Goodbye gists :(

[Levi-Lesches]

I didn't realize there wasn't anything open at github/feedback, so I opened community/community#4893 and linked back here. Upvote (not just 👍) there to get GitHub's attention on this.

[michellemerrill]

Hey everyone 👋 good news, you can now define the tab size in the Appearance settings of your user account. Code rendered on GitHub with tab indent will use your preferred tab size.