Research: per-tab context menus in peer terminals

Date: 2026-10-08 Question: What do peer terminals — and Firefox/Chromium as the canonical general-purpose tab menus — actually put in their tab(-header) context menus, with which behavior nuances, and which items should DropTerm’s per-tab context menu carry when consolidated with its existing verbs?

Scope (maintainer-directed): GNOME Terminal, Konsole, Yakuake, kitty, WezTerm, Guake, Windows Terminal, Firefox, Chromium. Primary sources only — official docs and project source at master/main (state as of 2026-10-08). Where a menu does not exist (kitty, WezTerm), the tab-bar mouse grammar is documented instead, since that is what a right-click would compete with.

TL;DR

Seven peers have a per-tab right-click menu; two (kitty, WezTerm) deliberately do not. Six findings drive the recommendation:

  1. Rename and Close are the only universal pair. Every peer with a menu closes the clicked tab; every terminal peer with a menu renames it (browsers never do — their “rename” is the page’s own title).
  2. The close cluster is the browser lineage’s signature, and Windows Terminal adopted it wholesale. Close Other Tabs / Close Tabs to the Right (Firefox, Chromium) appear in WT’s tab menu as a “Close” submenu (Tab.cpp). No VTE/KDE/Guake peer has either item: GNOME Terminal, Konsole, Yakuake, Guake, and kitty all ship only single-tab close in the UI.
  3. Move Left/Right is a terminal-peer item, not a browser one. GNOME Terminal has menu items, Yakuake menu items disabled at the edges, WT a submenu with the same edge-disabling (`_moveLeftMenuItem.IsEnabled(tabIndex

    0)`); Konsole and kitty keep it keybind/action-only with edge clamps. Browsers move to start/end/new-window instead.

  4. Every menu is scoped to the clicked tab, never the active one. Konsole captures _contextMenuTabIndex from the hit test; Yakuake resolves sessionAtTab(index); Guake resolves the page by its label event box; WT’s menu is built by the clicked tab’s own Tab object; Chromium’s TabMenuModel::Build(index) takes the context index; Firefox dispatches on TabContextMenu.contextTab. Konsole even makes the clicked tab current before renaming it.
  5. Rename modality splits inline vs. dialog, with inline in the minority. WT renames via a TextBox in the tab header (double-click does the same); Yakuake positions a QLineEdit directly over the tab; kitty’s double-click opens an interactive set_tab_title prompt. Guake and Konsole use dialogs (Konsole’s RenameTabDialog edits title formats plus tab/activity colors). DropTerm’s inline rename matches the WT/Yakuake lineage.
  6. Nobody puts terminal-scoped verbs in the tab menu. Copy/Paste/Clear Scrollback live in terminal-area menus in every peer (Guake’s terminal menu, kitty’s mouse map, GNOME Terminal’s context). The only page-scoped verb browsers add is Reload Tab — a page notion with no terminal analog beyond Clear Scrollback, which stays terminal-scoped everywhere.

Per-peer findings

GNOME Terminal (master, GTK4/libadwaita rewrite)

Menu model in terminal-notebook.ui (page_menu on the AdwTabView), actions installed in terminal-window.cc:

Konsole (master)

Tab-bar context menu built in src/widgets/ViewContainer.cpp:

Yakuake (master)

Drop-down peer. Menu built in readyTabContextMenu() in app/tabbar.cpp:

kitty — no tab context menu at all

The tab bar’s mouse grammar is in TabManager.handle_tab_bar_mouse() (kitty/tabs.py): left click activates, double-click opens the interactive rename prompt (set_tab_title), middle click closes the tab, a click on the +/empty area makes a new tab, and right-click is not handled (only LEFT and MIDDLE appear in the handler). The documented actions carry the rest: close_tab (“Close the current tab”), close_other_tabs_in_os_window, detach_tab, move_tab_forward/move_tab_backward, new_tab_with_cwd, set_tab_title (“Change the title of the active tab interactively”).

WezTerm — right-click is a navigator, not a menu

In wezterm-gui/src/termwindow/mouseevent.rs: right-click on a tab runs show_tab_navigator(); middle-click runs close_specific_tab; left-click activates. The + button’s right-click is KeyAssignment::ShowLauncher (the profile/domain launcher). The ShowTabNavigator docs: “displays a list of tabs and allows you to select and activate a tab from that list” — a fuzzy switcher, so rename/close are not menu items anywhere.

Guake (master)

Drop-down peer. Menu in guake/menus.py (mk_tab_context_menu), wired via TabLabelEventBox right-click in guake/boxes.py:

Windows Terminal (main)

Menu built per-tab in Tab.cpp (_CreateContextMenu, enable states in _EnableMenuItems):

Firefox (mozilla-central)

Markup in main-popupset.inc.xhtml (tabContextMenu), handlers in main-popupset.js:

Chromium (main)

Model built per context index in chrome/browser/ui/tabs/tab_menu_model.cc (TabMenuModel::Build), enablement in tab_strip_model.cc:

Comparison

Item GNOME Term Konsole Yakuake kitty WezTerm Guake Win Terminal Firefox Chromium
Right-click menu? yes yes yes no no (navigator) yes yes yes yes
Rename model item dialog inline dbl-click prompt ✗ dialog inline ✗ ✗
Close Tab yes yes yes middle-click middle-click yes yes (+Close pane ▸) yes yes
Close Other Tabs ✗ ✗ ✗ action only ✗ ✗ yes (submenu) yes (submenu) yes
Close to the Right ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ yes (“tabs after”) yes (+to start) yes
Move Left / Right yes keybind only yes, edge-off actions only ✗ ✗ submenu, edge-off ✗ (start/end) ✗
Detach / Move to new window Detach Detach (off at 1 tab) ✗ detach_tab ✗ ✗ Move to new window Move to New Window submenu
Duplicate ✗ ✗ ✗ compose (launch --cwd) ✗ ✗ yes yes yes
Pin yes ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ yes yes
New Tab in tab menu ✗ (on +) ✗ (on +) ✗ (bar menu) ✗ (on +) ✗ (+ → launcher) yes ✗ yes yes (“adjacent”)
Watch activity/silence ✗ session menu yes (submenus) ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗
Split ✗ ✗ yes ✗ ✗ ✗ yes (split-view items) (split items)
Color on tab ✗ in rename dialog ✗ ✗ ✗ reset only yes (picker) ✗ ✗
Terminal verbs (copy/paste/…) ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ (Reload is page) ✗

Ranked by peer precedent and checked against DropTerm’s existing verbs (src/context_menu.rs, src/keybinds.rs, src/terminal/widget.rs). Every item must target the clicked tab — the one universal rule.

3+ peer precedents:

  1. Rename Tab (6 terminal peers; inline in WT/Yakuake like DropTerm’s). Route to the existing start_rename on the clicked tab — the menu is the keyboard-less twin of double-click, exactly WT’s design. Only nuance: Konsole activates the clicked tab first; DropTerm need not, since its rename overlay is per-tab by TabId already.
  2. Close Tab (every peer). The clicked tab’s existing close path. Peers put the close cluster last (WT, Firefox, Chromium all do); keep it at the bottom behind the same “destructive cluster goes last” HIG instinct the terminal menu already follows.
  3. Close Other Tabs and Close Tabs to the Right (WT + both browsers). One-shot, no per-tab prompts — no surveyed peer prompts for these (Firefox closes immediately and offers Undo; WT never prompts). Enable like WT/Chromium: others > 1 for close-others, not-last-tab for close-right; both disabled outright when unsatisfiable, and both pivot on the clicked tab, not the active one.
  4. Move Left / Move Right (GT/Yakuake/WT menus; Konsole/kitty keybinds). DropTerm already has Action::MoveTabLeft/Right on Ctrl+Shift+PageUp/PageDown that clamp at the edges (src/terminal/widget.rs:116-120) — the menu is a third surface for an existing verb. Disable at the edges per WT/Yakuake rather than relying on the clamp silently no-oping.
  5. Duplicate Tab (WT/Firefox/Chromium). Existing open_duplicate_tab verb (Ctrl+Shift+D), applied to the clicked tab’s cwd.
  6. New Tab (+ per-profile launches) (Guake/Firefox/Chromium). Rides the existing ProfilesFolder shape from src/context_menu.rs; equal-weight counterpoint: GT/Konsole/WT keep it off the tab menu since their + or bar handles it, and DropTerm’s + right-click already does. Recommended for menu completeness — right-clicking a tab shouldn’t force a trip to the far end of the bar.

1-2 or 0 precedents:

  1. Switch Profile ▸ (0 precedents — DropTerm-specific). Keep, as the terminal-area menu already carries it; in the per-tab menu it gains the clicked-tab targeting the terminal menu cannot offer (that one respawns the active tab). Flag in the spec as an extension beyond the peer norm, not a convention-follow.
  2. Terminal-scoped verbs (Copy/Paste/Select All/Clear Scrollback) — 0 precedents in any tab menu surveyed; every peer keeps them in the terminal-area menu, and they act on a terminal surface, not a tab identity. Exclude: the terminal context menu already owns them, and Firefox/Chromium’s lone page-scoped verb (Reload) maps to nothing in DropTerm — Clear Scrollback is the nearest cousin and stays terminal-scoped everywhere.
  3. Out of scope / deferred: Pin Tab (GT/Firefox/Chromium precedents exist, but ROADMAP.md:44 pins it to “Later” — note, don’t design for it); Detach/Move to New Window (no multi-window DropTerm); watch activity/silence (Yakuake-only among drop-downs; no monitoring infrastructure); color-per-tab and export/find (WT/GNOME-specific).

Sources

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