helium/ui/layout: add an option to center the address bar

[jamdaniels]

For your pull request to not get closed without review, please confirm that:

• An issue exists where the maintainers agreed that this should be implemented
  (an approved feature request, or confirmed bug).
• I tested that my contribution works locally, and does not break anything,
  otherwise I have marked my PR as draft.
• If my contribution is non-trivial, I did not use AI to write most of it.
• I understand that I will be permanently banned from interacting with this
  organization if I lied by checking any of these checkboxes.

Tested on (check one or more):

• Windows
• macOS
• Linux

---

This PR adds a setting to toggle between the current used, full width address bar and a more narrow, centered, responsive address bar with a fixed max width of 900px. Currently, the full-width address bar is disabled by default. These additions are skipped if the CAT feature is active. I've researched how the centered, responsive address bar is implemented in Brave, which already does this and this solution is inspired by it.

Closes #104

Related #1059 #1121

Pictures:

Video showcase:

helium-wide-address-bar.mp4

I do want to say that I used AI to implement this, but I didn't "vibe code" it. I did a lot of back and forth with multiple frontier models, discussed how to implement this feature properly while following best practices and look out for possible concerns and thoroughly tested all scenarios locally. I just want to help out and I would love if this feature gets added. If the full-width address bar should stay the default, let me know and I'm happy to change that and anything else necessary.

[wukko]

the full width address bar should indeed stay default & please use dev.sh, it sets the correct env variables for quilt that make the patches look better

[jamdaniels]

• changed approach to 'enable centered address bar'
• added hunk offset fixes

I hope this fits better, I also tried to match the naming patterns.

helium-pr-1.mp4

[ayushk-1801]

When will this be merged?

[jamdaniels]

@wukko do you want me to resolve the conflicts now or should I wait for further changes until this is 'in line' to be merged or do you guys have other plans? Will you let me know or should I just keep resolving the conflicts?

[nsk-47]

Is it possible to move the URL also to the center of address bar like in Duckduckgo?

[Vexcited]

I think this would be great for vertical tabs since the address bar takes the whole width and it gets very hard to grab the window and move it around on Windows or macOS...

More free space around the address bar would be nice!

[fanckush]

can't wait for this to get merged! moving the window now is very difficult, there is virtually no place to drag from

[fanckush]

@jamdaniels maybe if you request re-review at the top right, you might get another review from the maintainers

[jamdaniels]

@fanckush fixing the remaining conflicts right now and will commit and request a re-review asap.

[jamdaniels]

• Solved merge conflicts
• Moved setting into appearance section under browser layout
• Setting still doesn't interfere when compact layout is enabled
• Tested address bar behavior in all layout settings and scenarios

he-pr-1-3.mp4

Please let me know if any adjustments are necessary. Also fanckush suggested to dynamically adjust the width instead of a fixed width. Should it be changed?

[dumbmoron]

Please let me know if any adjustments are necessary.

The patch formatting is wrong, could you please reformat it with correct quilt vars? (see: https://github.com/imputnet/helium-macos/blob/main/docs/building.md#development-build-and-environment or devutils/set_quilt_vars.sh)

[dumbmoron]

@greptileai

[greptile-apps]

_{Last reviewed commit: "helium/ui/centered-a..."}

[jamdaniels]

Video showing the state after the most recent commit

65d9c8e.mp4

[wukko]

really good PR btw, thank you for your work!

[wukko]

@jamdaniels do you mind if i finish this PR for you?

[jamdaniels]

bba216c.mp4

• no regressions, checked all possible settings
• performed tests before every single commit

@wukko

[jamdaniels]

your patch works well as is btw, and i made a new UI layout prototype with this PR as a crucial part of it:

screenshot

centered location bar may get promoted to default (now? or at some point?), gotta think about it more though

Looks amazing! I really like the centered, short/main-URL and that the tabs moved down. I think a default centered address bar would be a good UX improvement (esp. for users that touch the mouse a lot but that's up to you guys ^^)

[wukko]

@greptileai

[greptile-apps]

Important Files Changed

Filename	Overview
patches/helium/ui/layout/centered-address-bar.patch	Adds centered address bar feature: new pref, post-layout centering in MaybeCenterLocationBar(), settings toggle guarded against compact/CAT layout. One discrepancy: kCenteredLocationBarMaxWidth is 800 but PR description says 900px.
patches/helium/ui/layout/compact.patch	Line-number offset updates to account for lines added by the new centered-address-bar.patch earlier in the sequence. No logic changes.
patches/helium/ui/layout/vertical.patch	Line-number offset update for the same reason as compact.patch. No logic changes.
patches/series	Inserts helium/ui/layout/centered-address-bar.patch at the correct position — after the shared layout patches and before compact/vertical, which is required because those two patches' line offsets depend on it.

_{Reviews (2): Last reviewed commit: "helium/ui: finish centered address bar" | Re-trigger Greptile}

[wukko]

refactored the remaining parts, should be good to merge now:

centered.mp4

@dumbmoron

[wukko]

@jamdaniels thank you!

[jamdaniels]

@jamdaniels thank you!

thanks for letting me work on this and the patience, can't wait to use it! I'll also have a close look at the remaining changes/refactor and hope to improve :)

[jabuxas]

im having ghost text on where the bar should originally be when having this center search bar toggled on. linux wayland helium 0.10.9.1-1

10mb_output.mp4