When non-empty, this option determines the content of the tab pages line at the top of the Vim window. When empty Vim will use a default tab pages line. See setting-tabline for more info.

The tab pages line only appears as specified with the 'showtabline' option and only when there is no GUI tab line. When 'e' is in 'guioptions' and the GUI supports a tab line 'guitablabel' is used instead. Note that the two tab pages lines are very different.

The value is evaluated like with 'statusline'. You can use tabpagenr(), tabpagewinnr() and tabpagebuflist() to figure out the text to be displayed. Use "%1T" for the first label, "%2T" for the second one, etc. Use "%X" items for closing labels.

When changing something that is used in 'tabline' that does not trigger it to be updated, use :redrawtabline. This option cannot be set in a modeline when 'modelineexpr' is off.

Keep in mind that only one of the tab pages is the current one, others are invisible and you can't jump to their windows.

(default empty)