I would like to make my TabLayout control grow in height to meet the height of tab with the the tallest custom view.

The simplest of layouts that has a TabLayout header:

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:background="@color/black"
    android:orientation="vertical">

    <com.google.android.material.tabs.TabLayout
        android:id="@+id/tabLayout"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        app:tabMinWidth="96dp"
        app:tabMode="scrollable" />
</LinearLayout>

And a layout for a simple image/text pair to be inflated for tab items:

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:orientation="vertical"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content">

    <ImageView
        android:layout_width="48dp"
        android:layout_height="48dp"
        android:src="@drawable/ic_launcher_background" />

    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/tv"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:singleLine="false" />

</LinearLayout>

And the activity to populate the TabLayout control as follows:

class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity() {

    lateinit var activityMainBinding : ActivityMainBinding

    fun insertTab(s:String) {
        val tab = activityMainBinding.tabLayout.newTab()
        val item = ActivityItemBinding.inflate(layoutInflater)
        item.tv.text = s
        tab.customView = item.root
        activityMainBinding.tabLayout.addTab(tab)
    }

    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        activityMainBinding = ActivityMainBinding.inflate(layoutInflater)
        setContentView(activityMainBinding.root)
        insertTab("Mark David John")
        insertTab("Bob")
    }
}

Despite all layout_height items above being wrap_content, the TabView’s own height doesn’t reliably grow when items are added to it.

You can see above that “Mark David John” gets cut off.

Of course, using a minHeight attribute in the TextView or setting a fixed height on the TabLayout itself works. But that presumes a priori knowledge of how big the names in the Tabs are going to be. With a fixed height solution, I’d have this:

That looks much better when fixed height sizes are used. But in the case where the “Mark David John” tab isn’t there, I’d have this:

When what I really want is to not have wasted blank space when it’s not needed:

Is there a solution that works to have the TabLayout grow in height to adjust to the height to accommodate the largest string or view?

Disclaimer: My real work application is using a custom view. The above is a sample, so switching to using non-custom views might not be viable.