For the past few days, I was searching for something worth learning about as a UI designer.. and I found Tab Bar. The one element is so basic that no matter when and where the app is built you’ll find a tab bar.

and literally, I have to struggle to search for the top 5 apps that don’t have an app bar which is cool for me as I found my thing. I give few days to research, and in few days I come up with this cool article and I hope you’ll find it helpful in learning how to design a beautiful Tab Bar for your app.

First, clear out the basics.

Q) Do You App Actually Need A Tab Bar?

Most of the popular apps like Amazon, Spotify, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, are using Tab Bar but this doesn’t mean that your app actually needs it or your audience will like it just because every popular app has it. as many apps don’t have a Tab Bar like Calculator app, Calendar App, Uber, etc.

to know whether you should use the Tab Bar inside your app or not, you should have to do a bit of research which can take a little time and effort, but believe me and great designers (out there) it’ll help you.

Q) Why App have Tab Bars?

The first question to ask is why the hell apps use Tab Bar, and the answer to this is “for the ease of use” which basically means this simple thing helps users to simply navigate to the page bit more easily rather than going to menus and then selecting the particular page.

Tab Bars aka Navigation Bar are basically used by big apps with more than one screen, unlike calculator apps that users have to use many times, which is a bit easy to just highlight on the main screen.

Q) Why Tab Bar not Menu?

Some apps use menus to list out their pages, yes they take less screen space (Menu icon) but the downside is that it might be frustrating for the user to tap on the menu and then going to the particular page multiples times.

therefore for Easy-Of-Use, designers invented the cool little Tab Bar that is close to your thumb so that you tap on it easily for better navigation and easier surfing with less hustle.

so know you know the basic, you should think of whether you should use the Tab Bar or not, If yes lets start learning to design Tab Bars with my first tip..

#1 Show the Most Important Destination

Tab Bar should only contain the most useful destination, you can’t add useless screens and clutter out your tab bar. Always remember to add screens that every user will use most of the time they enter your app.

Many apps add a Search screen on their tab bar as this helps in better navigation of the content, just like that you should also add something that is most important for your user, and without it, your user has to struggle.

Spotify uses the simple Tab Bar destination every music player app needs, Home Tab for Everything use played or might listen, Search Tab for searching out the next song and podcast, Library Tab for all your liked and saved songs in the playlist, and Premium Tab which is useful for the company as a user can easily tap the tab and pay instantly without hustling.

#2 Clutter Similar Things Together

Big apps prefer using four to five tabs inside the tab bar which makes the tab bar clutter-free and also help user to the simple tab on the button as if there are more than five icons the user might miss-tap as the thumb size matter.

Learn this from Pinterest, as Pinterest only have four tabs on the tab bar which helps the user to easily tap on them and the Awesome thing is that Pinterest also follows the inbuilt tabbing system which helps in adding several tabs together inside a particular tab like update a messages tab inside the notification tab.

#3 Use Labels If Needed

any popular apps use Labels as they provide a clear idea of what a particular tab will do when a user taps it. but it is totally your choice 9 out of 10 times designers prefer using tabs with labels but out of the 10 times, 1-time designers don’t put labels because the tabs are simple or they are too much used by the user as it fits inside the mind of the user.

Youtube and Ikea apps have different types of complexity as the Ikea app is mainly for shopping furniture, youtube is a bit complex therefore they add labels, as well as the icons of youtube, are also not so familiar as explore sigh is a kind of less known than the search icons.

Pro Tip: Pinterest Hide the Labels

Pinterest is a pro in terms of designing a tab bar with labels as they hide the labels when the user gets used to them over time, I personally like this therefore I also suggest you guys, but it all depends on your choice.

#4 Text Labels Should Be Short

Labels inside the tab bar should be short and clear and you should take care that it must be inside the design, use the exact labels just like you do while designing button labels. it might be tricky if you have something unique, in that case, use dot (Professional or Pro.) for better design and experience.

TikTok uses the short labels for all of its tabs and also hides the label of the home tab as many people will understand that this is create button, you can also do this if you want to grab the attention of the user, but be careful.

#5 Avoid Hiding Your Tab Bar

Tab bar is the one thing that should avoid being hidden from the user as that includes the most important navigation and the user should always them is shown to them and this rule is followed by almost every app, except some, I can’t know the perfect reason but it might be for testing purpose or so.

Pinterest is first when it’s about testing new things with a tab bar, they make the app bar hide as we scroll the images it might be because the user wanted to see images on the interest rather than seeing the app bar. just a guess.

#6 Arrange Tabs in Order

Arranging tabs in order is necessary as every app does it for better clarity and usability, Users love to see arranged things and the tab bar is one of them. Manu big apps basically follow a similar rule for designing it.

Pinterest used to show the Home screen first because the apps arrange like the whole important stuff is on the home, search tab for searching content and notification tab for updates and profile for other stuff.

Spotify, Youtube, Pinterst, TikTok, almost every single app use this kind of arrangement. but it doesn't mean you should also the learning is that you should arrange the things in order and follow it consistently.

#7 Communicate The Location

Tab Bar aka Navigation Bar helps users in navigating easily, but if the users doesn’t know their location how will they effectively surf around.

Just like Duolingo and Headspace make sure you should communicate the exact location of the user for easier navigation or so.

#8 Learn From Data and Improve Continuously.

Data is the key point if you want to improve your tab bar design as if you have an active audience you can test which tab our users like the most which tab our users don’t use, does our audience needs four tabs or five tabs, etc.

when building a successful app, all it takes to improve and improve feedbacks are the key to your success. Pinterest as we discussed above is the most interesting company that doesn't hustle to test new things and the important thing they have is their audience which helps them in it.

Bonus: Show Bages Inside Tab Bar.

As you stayed till the last, I have a bonus for you which is to use a notification badge inside your app bar, twitter used it, youtube used it, Pinterest used it almost every app used it. it’ll help you in better engagement

Designing a Tab Bar might be tricky but once you have your basic clear you’ll find the way out of the big problems and also find creative ideas from it.

I’m happy to share some of the points that I’ve learned from various apps, and I hope you like my effort in creating this article.

Thanks for Reading.