Tab Bar

A tab bar is the row of icons along the bottom of an app that switches between its main sections. Home, Search, Alerts, Profile: one tap moves you between them, from anywhere in the app.

The filled-in icon is the tab you're on; the rest are where you could be. The bar never leaves the screen, so you always know where you are and how to get anywhere else. That constant footing is why nearly every app you use daily has one. Instagram runs on its tab bar. So does Spotify, and probably your bank.

Convention caps it around five tabs, because thumbs are blunt instruments and a sixth icon makes all of them harder to hit. When a team has more sections than slots, something moves to a More tab or goes behind a hamburger menu, and the argument over what earns a slot gets surprisingly heated. Whatever wins a tab is what the company believes the app is for.

Some apps spend the middle slot on an action instead of a section, a plus that opens the composer or the camera. It bends the pattern's logic a little, and users forgive it instantly, because creating things is usually why they came.

You'll also hear bottom navigation or bottom nav, which is the Android name, plus bottom bar or just tabs. Some people say "nav bar" loosely, though on the web that usually means the bar across the top of the page.

When you want the app's main sections one thumb-tap away from everywhere, ask for a tab bar.