5 Ways of styling Tab in Flutter

July 10, 2019

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The default tabs styles provided by the flutter SDK is not much appealing. But It doesn’t mean you cannot customize the look and feel of the tab. Customizing the style of the tabs indicator in Flutter can be done with simple lines of code without implementing our own widget.

In this article, I will show you how to add 5 different tab styles for your next flutter project.

First, you need to create a basic tab using DefaultTabController class. Assign DefaultTabController to a home property of the MaterialApp widget. As the child of DefaultTabController, you can use Scaffold with the Appbar and the body. Assign Appbar widget to Appbar property of the Scaffold to make the header part of the tabs. For the body property of scaffold, you can assign TabBarView widget with the 3 child Widgets to show the tab content item when you click.

This is the full code for default tab.

    
DefaultTabController(
        length: 3,
        child: Scaffold(
          appBar: AppBar(
            elevation: 0,
            bottom: TabBar(indicatorSize: TabBarIndicatorSize.label, tabs: [
              Tab(
                child: Align(
                  alignment: Alignment.center,
                  child: Text("APPS"),
                ),
              ),
              Tab(
                child: Align(
                  alignment: Alignment.center,
                  child: Text("MOVIES"),
                ),
              ),
              Tab(
                child: Align(
                  alignment: Alignment.center,
                  child: Text("GAMES"),
                ),
              ),
            ]),
          ),
          body: TabBarView(children: [
            Icon(Icons.apps),
            Icon(Icons.movie),
            Icon(Icons.games),
          ]),
        )
    )

1. Rounded Corner tab style

As a First style, we are going to add a round corner style to the tab indicator. First of all, I will give a brief description of the param which we are going to modify.

unselectedLabelColor – Colour of the label where the indicator not present. Basically, the indicator which is not selected yet.
indicatorSize – Selected Indicator size. We can add two value to take the indicator the tab width or the label width.
indicator – This is the place we are going to assign our custom style for indicator
tabs – This will contain the list of tab headers. In here we can add extra style to each tab headers.

Round corner style can be done by adding BoxDecoration with borderRadius 50. In here, we are adding a red colour border to each tab headers. When someone selects the tab It will fill with the red colour. If you are not interested in the border, you can just remove the border and keep it simple.

    
DefaultTabController(
      length: 3,
      child: Scaffold(
        appBar: AppBar(
          backgroundColor: Colors.white,
          elevation: 0,
          bottom: TabBar(
              unselectedLabelColor: Colors.redAccent,
              indicatorSize: TabBarIndicatorSize.label,
              indicator: BoxDecoration(
                  borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(50),
                  color: Colors.redAccent),
              tabs: [
                Tab(
                  child: Container(
                    decoration: BoxDecoration(
                        borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(50),
                        border: Border.all(color: Colors.redAccent, width: 1)),
                    child: Align(
                      alignment: Alignment.center,
                      child: Text("APPS"),
                    ),
                  ),
                ),
                Tab(
                  child: Container(
                    decoration: BoxDecoration(
                        borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(50),
                        border: Border.all(color: Colors.redAccent, width: 1)),
                    child: Align(
                      alignment: Alignment.center,
                      child: Text("MOVIES"),
                    ),
                  ),
                ),
                Tab(
                  child: Container(
                    decoration: BoxDecoration(
                        borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(50),
                        border: Border.all(color: Colors.redAccent, width: 1)),
                    child: Align(
                      alignment: Alignment.center,
                      child: Text("GAMES"),
                    ),
                  ),
                ),
              ]),
        ),
        body: TabBarView(children: [
          Icon(Icons.apps),
          Icon(Icons.movie),
          Icon(Icons.games),
        ]),
      ))

2. Rounded Corner with Gradient tab style

We are going to remove the style which I was added to each tab in the previous method. After removing, added a gradient to BoxDecoration. You can use the LinearGradient widget with two colours get the gradient effect. You can change the gradient-based on your preferences.

(Want to learn more about Gradient? Check here)

    
DefaultTabController(
        length: 3,
        child: Scaffold(
          appBar: AppBar(
            backgroundColor: Colors.white,
            elevation: 0,
            bottom: TabBar(
                unselectedLabelColor: Colors.redAccent,
                indicatorSize: TabBarIndicatorSize.tab,
                indicator: BoxDecoration(
                    gradient: LinearGradient(
                        colors: [Colors.redAccent, Colors.orangeAccent]),
                    borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(50),
                    color: Colors.redAccent),
                tabs: [
                  Tab(
                    child: Align(
                      alignment: Alignment.center,
                      child: Text("APPS"),
                    ),
                  ),
                  Tab(
                    child: Align(
                      alignment: Alignment.center,
                      child: Text("MOVIES"),
                    ),
                  ),
                  Tab(
                    child: Align(
                      alignment: Alignment.center,
                      child: Text("GAMES"),
                    ),
                  ),
                ]),
          ),
          body: TabBarView(children: [
            Icon(Icons.apps),
            Icon(Icons.movie),
            Icon(Icons.games),
          ]),
        )
     )

3. Square tab style

Square style can be done by changing small code in the previous one. BorderRadius of the boxDecoration can be changed by adding 10 for both leftTop and rightTop. Then I change the Appbar backgroundColor to the red to make it look better.

    
DefaultTabController(
        length: 3,
        child: Scaffold(
          appBar: AppBar(
            backgroundColor: Colors.redAccent,
            elevation: 0,
            bottom: TabBar(
                labelColor: Colors.redAccent,
                unselectedLabelColor: Colors.white,
                indicatorSize: TabBarIndicatorSize.label,
                indicator: BoxDecoration(
                    borderRadius: BorderRadius.only(
                        topLeft: Radius.circular(10),
                        topRight: Radius.circular(10)),
                    color: Colors.white),
                tabs: [
                  Tab(
                    child: Align(
                      alignment: Alignment.center,
                      child: Text("APPS"),
                    ),
                  ),
                  Tab(
                    child: Align(
                      alignment: Alignment.center,
                      child: Text("MOVIES"),
                    ),
                  ),
                  Tab(
                    child: Align(
                      alignment: Alignment.center,
                      child: Text("GAMES"),
                    ),
                  ),
                ]
            ),
          ),
          body: TabBarView(children: [
            Icon(Icons.apps),
            Icon(Icons.movie),
            Icon(Icons.games),
          ]),
        )
     )

4. Diamond tab style

You can get Diamond tab style by adding ShapeDecoration with BeveledRectangleBorder for the shape parameter for the ShapeDecoration widget. BeveledRectangleBorder will allow you to add flatten corner instead of round corners.

The line segments that connect the rectangle's four sides will begin and at locations offset by the corresponding border radius, but not farther than the side's center. If all the border radii exceed the sides' half widths/heights the resulting shape is diamond made by connecting the centers of the sides.
- flutter.dev - BeveledRectangleBorder

In here we use borderRadius as 10 to make it look like this.

    
DefaultTabController(
        length: 3,
        child: Scaffold(
          appBar: AppBar(
            backgroundColor: Colors.white,
            elevation: 0,
            bottom: TabBar(
                unselectedLabelColor: Colors.redAccent,
                indicatorPadding: EdgeInsets.only(left: 30, right: 30),
                indicator: ShapeDecoration(
                    color: Colors.redAccent,
                    shape: BeveledRectangleBorder(
                        borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(10),
                        side: BorderSide(
                          color: Colors.redAccent,
                        )
                    )
                ),
                tabs: [
                  Tab(
                    child: Align(
                      alignment: Alignment.center,
                      child: Text("APPS"),
                    ),
                  ),
                  Tab(
                    child: Align(
                      alignment: Alignment.center,
                      child: Text("MOVIES"),
                    ),
                  ),
                  Tab(
                    child: Align(
                      alignment: Alignment.center,
                      child: Text("GAMES"),
                    ),
                  ),
                ]),
          ),
          body: TabBarView(children: [
            Icon(Icons.apps),
            Icon(Icons.movie),
            Icon(Icons.games),
          ]),
        )
     )

5. Diamond tab style(2)

Likewise, by changing the borderRadius of the BeveledRectangleBorder, you can achieve different shapes. You can change borderRadius to 20 to get a different shape. You can try different styles by changing this borderRadius value.

    
DefaultTabController(
        length: 3,
        child: Scaffold(
          appBar: AppBar(
            backgroundColor: Colors.white,
            elevation: 0,
            bottom: TabBar(
                unselectedLabelColor: Colors.redAccent,
                indicatorPadding: EdgeInsets.only(left: 30, right: 30),
                indicator: ShapeDecoration(
                    color: Colors.redAccent,
                    shape: BeveledRectangleBorder(
                        borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(20),
                        side: BorderSide(
                          color: Colors.redAccent,
                        ))),
                tabs: [
                  Tab(
                    child: Align(
                      alignment: Alignment.center,
                      child: Text("APPS"),
                    ),
                  ),
                  Tab(
                    child: Align(
                      alignment: Alignment.center,
                      child: Text("MOVIES"),
                    ),
                  ),
                  Tab(
                    child: Align(
                      alignment: Alignment.center,
                      child: Text("GAMES"),
                    ),
                  ),
                ]),
          ),
          body: TabBarView(children: [
            Icon(Icons.apps),
            Icon(Icons.movie),
            Icon(Icons.games),
          ]),
        )
     )

I hope you get a better understanding of how to change the tab style by a few lines of code. If you are like to watch this in action, please watch the video mentioned below.