the settings section explicitly notes in the title/label that this behavior applies to Ctrl+TAB

Isn’t hardcoding “Ctrl+Tab” on the user interface a “bad thing”??
I mean, I can assign any (unrelated) function I want to “Ctrl+Tab”…and now that verbage on that setting in the Preferences doesn’t make any sense, because now my Ctrl+Tab combo opens up an Explorer window (for example).

This seems odd. If a program is going to take over Ctrl+Tab for a specific purpose, that’s fine, but it should be disallowed to use that combination for other things in Shortcut Mapper then…

in that two different behaviors were merged into a single setting.

Probably the idea was/is to keep the number of Preference settings as small as possible, thus some functionality is shared. I do understand your complaint, though.

Why not start your review with Review1, and then move to the right, reviewing tabs until you have finished all of your reviews (you know it when you run out of tabs); then delete the “review” files by right-clicking on the tab for File 3 and choosing Close All to the Right ?

as you’ve already found out, this is nothing which, currently, can be configured hence I guess this is now relevant.

Point is that switching between files and closing files are different tasks and should have separate settings.

Make MRU tab activate instead of rightmost tab while tab closure (if MRU enabled).

I know that everyone works differently, but why exactly is it desirable behavior to open the tab to the left of where a closed tab was?

I’m afraid the answer might be: “Because that is how Notepad++ used to work”.
That answer is okay on one hand, but uncomfortable on the other hand.
We should always consider a possibly better way of working, rather than just the same old way being best.

For me it makes way more sense to activate the MRU tab, so I welcome the above change.
I often grab something from one tab, paste it into another tab, and then close the tab where I did the paste. Then I need to continue working in the original tab, but (before the change in behavior) I am left sitting in some “ansychronous” tab that isn’t related to what I was doing. I’d have to find the original tab and switch to it, and that was distracting to my workflow.

Here’s some more history on this:

• https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/14146/why-doesn-t-a-tab-close-return-you-to-tab-most-recently-worked-in
• https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/885

I believe it now shares this setting:

I have that disabled always and when I close a tab, the one to the left opens always. So I think that’s what the OP wants. Thanks @Alan-Kilborn !

Cheers.

I believe it now shares this setting: