JTabbedPane: avoid automatic re-ordering tabs if stacked / Nimbus

Question

a JTabbedPane is just what I need for my purpose. I have very limited horizontal space, so my Tabs get stacked, which is perfectly ok.

But the default behaviour is t

Answer 1

It's a bit of a hack but you can override the Nimbus defaults to have the plain old Java look-and-feel for the tabbed pane, whilst keeping everything else the same. The plain Java look-and-feel for a tabbed pane doesn't do the annoying reordering. Just store the defaults before you set the look-and-feel and then set them back.

// get the defaults to keep
HashMap defaultsToKeep = new HashMap<>();
for (Map.Entry entry : UIManager.getDefaults().entrySet()) {
    boolean isStringKey = entry.getKey().getClass() == String.class ;
    String key = isStringKey ? ((String) entry.getKey()):"";    
    if (key.startsWith("TabbedPane")) {
        defaultsToKeep.put(entry.getKey(), entry.getValue());
    }
}

// set nimbus look and feel
for (LookAndFeelInfo info : UIManager.getInstalledLookAndFeels()) {
    if ("Nimbus".equals(info.getName())) {
        UIManager.setLookAndFeel(info.getClassName());
        break;
    }
}

// set back your originals
for (Map.Entry entry : defaultsToKeep.entrySet()) {
    UIManager.getDefaults().put(entry.getKey(), entry.getValue());
}

JFrame.setDefaultLookAndFeelDecorated(true);