I added "workbench.editor.tabSizing": "shrink" to my settings, and while that makes all the tabs fit in on the bar, it doesn't make them equal width. I want them to be equal width so I can quickly close out of them.
There's a new value for the workbench.editor.tabSizing option: "fixed". You can find the PR that implemented it here: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/pull/181729.
Is there a way to make all tabs the same width?
Apparently not.
As you can already see, at the time of this writing, there are only two options for workbench.editor.tabSizing, and neither do what you are looking for.
And googling "github vscode issues tab sizing uniform width", I came across three issue tickets asking for this at various points in time that all got closed:
Tab sizes should be a fixed size #38594 closed as a duplicate Allow to close multiple tabs without moving the mouse after closing one #40290. I suppose it's closed as an XY problem? Lucky for you, it's the exact same XY problem you have. So subscribe to that issue ticket. You can show your support for the issue ticket by giving a thumbs up reaction to the issue. But please don't make a "me too" comment. "me too" comments generally come off as annoying to repo maintainers because they clutter up discussion and don't contribute anything of significant value.
Uniform tab size for opened editors #146689 closed as a duplicate, but either I'm blind, or they forgot to comment what the duplicate target is.
Tab wrap - add a setting for uniform tab sizing across all rows #115132 closed as "out-of-scope". Quote:
We closed this issue because we don't plan to address it in the foreseeable future. You can find more detailed information about our decision-making process here. If you disagree and feel that this issue is crucial: We are happy to listen and to reconsider.
In terms of the XY problem here,
It's also worth noting- if you use the mouse middle click (or equivalent action with a touchpad) to close tabs, then it's much less a problem of hitting the close button, since with that approach, the entire tab handle is one big close button.
And you can just as well make the tab close button go on the left of the tab handle by following How can I make VS Code editor tabs close button go on left side?.