How to create an animated Shadcn Tab component with Shadcn/ui

Tab components are everywhere: dashboards, settings panels, product pages. But most implementations are static, lifeless and forgettable. What if your tabs felt alive, with smooth spring animations, a stacked card effect on hover, and a shiny active indicator that glides between buttons?

A basic tab switcher can show and hide content. A better one gives the user a clear active state, smooth transitions, and slight movement that makes the interface feel alive. That’s the idea behind this component: a reusable animated tab system built in Shadcn style with React, Tailwind CSS, and Motion.

In this tutorial, you’ll create exactly that: a fully animated tab component of a ready-to-use registry with Shadcn/ui, Framer Motion, and Shadcn Space.

By the end, you will have a reusable. Component with:

• Spring active tablet indicator

• A stacked card effect that fans out on hover.

• A smooth entry animation when the active tab changes

• Fully theme-aware styling using Shadcn/ui CSS variables

Video walkthrough: If you prefer to follow along visually, watch the full tutorial on YouTube:

Table of Contents

Conditions

Before you begin, make sure you have a working knowledge of:

• Basics of React and TypeScript

• Tailwind CSS utility classes

• Shadcn/ui Basics (Component Installation and Theming)

You’ll also need a Next.js or Vite project with the following preconfigured:

What will you make?

Here’s an overview of the component architecture you’ll build in this tutorial:

AnimatedTabMotion (page/demo entry point)
└── Tabs (tab bar + content orchestrator)
├── Tab buttons (with spring-animated active pill)
└── FadeInStack (stacked, animated content panels)

The key behaviors are:

1. Spring bullet animation. – A spring pill animation is a UI effect in which the active tab indicator, a round, bullet-shaped highlight, physically moves from button to button using a spring physics curve instead of a standard CSS transition. Instead of teleporting or fading, the bullet slides between the tabs with a subtle bounce at the end, mimicking the motion of a real physical object.

2. The effect of a stacked card – Passive tab panels are projected behind active ones, smaller and slightly faded at the bottom, giving the illusion of layered depth.

3. Fan out on the hoar – When the user hovers over the content area, the stacked cards expand vertically.

4. Bounce entry – When a new tab is selected, the top (active) card moves down and back into place.

Install the component via the Shadcn Space CLI.

Shadcn Space is a registry of production-ready Shadcn/ui-compatible components. Instead of scaffolding this component from scratch, you can pull it directly into your project using the Shadcn CLI.

Check them out Getting Started Guide To learn how to use the Shadcn CLI with third-party registries.

run one Depending on your package manager, either of the following commands:

pnpm

pnpm dlx shadcn@latest add @shadcn-space/tabs-01

NPM

npx shadcn@latest add @shadcn-space/tabs-01

yarn

yarn dlx shadcn@latest add @shadcn-space/tabs-01

become

bunx --bun shadcn@latest add @shadcn-space/tabs-01

This scaffolds a component file into your project, pre-wired to your existing Shadcn/ui theme tokens. Then you can customize or extend it as needed, which is exactly what you’ll learn in this tutorial.

Understand the structure of components.

Before writing any code, let’s review the entire component and break it down into logical chunks. Here is the full implementation:

"use client";

import { useState } from "react";
import { motion } from "motion/react";
import { cn } from "@/lib/utils";

type Tab = {
  title: string;
  value: string;
  content?: React.ReactNode;
};

type TabsProps = {
  tabs: Tab();
    containerClassName?: string;
  activeTabClassName?: string;
  tabClassName?: string;
  contentClassName?: string;
};

const tabs = (
  {
    title: "Product",
    value: "product",
    content: (
      
    ),
  },
  {title: "Services",
    value: "services",
    content: (
      
    ),
  },
  {
    title: "Playground",
    value: "playground",
    content: (
      
    ),
  },
 {
    title: "Content",
    value: "content",
    content: (
      
    ),
  },
  {
    title: "Random",
    value: "random",
    content: (
      
    ),
  },
);

const Tabs = ({
  tabs,
  containerClassName,
  activeTabClassName,
  tabClassName,
  contentClassName,
}: TabsProps) => {
  const (activeIdx, setActiveIdx) = useState(0);
  const (hovering, setHovering) = useState(false);

  const handleSelect = (idx: number) => {
    setActiveIdx(idx);
  };
const reorderedTabs = (
    tabs(activeIdx),
    ...tabs.filter((_, i) => i !== activeIdx),
  );

  return (
    <>
      

        {tabs.map((tab, idx) => {
          const isActive = idx === activeIdx;
          return (
             handleSelect(idx)}
              onMouseEnter={() => setHovering(true)}
              onMouseLeave={() => setHovering(false)}
              className={cn("relative px-4 py-2 rounded-full", tabClassName)}
              style={{ transformStyle: "preserve-3d" }}
            >
              {isActive && (
                
              )}

                {tab.title}
              
            
          );
        })}
      
      
    >
  );
};

type FadeInStackProps = {
  className?: string;
  tabs: Tab();
  hovering?: boolean;
};

const FadeInStack = ({ className, tabs, hovering }: FadeInStackProps) => {
  return (
    

      {tabs.map((tab, idx) => (
        
          {tab.content}
        
      ))}
    
  );
};

export default function AnimatedTabMotion() {
  return (
    <>
      
    >
  );

}

Now, let’s break it down into pieces.

Step 1: Define tab data types.

type Tab = {
title: string;
value: string;
content?: React.ReactNode;
};
type TabsProps = {
tabs: Tab();
containerClassName?: string;
activeTabClassName?: string;
tabClassName?: string;
contentClassName?: string;
};

gave Tab type defines the format of each tab item:

• title – Label presented in tab button.

• value – A unique key used to identify each tab (and as framer motion layoutId).

• content – An optional. React.ReactNodeThat is, you can pass any JSX as the panel body.

gave TabsProps Makes type Tabs Highly mixed ingredients. Each visual layer has an override. classNameso you can freely rearrange the active tablet, individual tab buttons, and content area without touching the underlying logic.

Step 2: Construct the tab data array.

const tabs = (
{
title: “Product”,
value: “product”,
content: (

Product Tab

), }, // ... more tabs );

of each tab content Shadcn/ui is a semantic token-like JSX element. bg-muted, text-foreground And border-border. This is intentional: these tokens automatically adapt to your light/dark theme without any additional configuration.

You can change these placeholders.

const (activeIdx, setActiveIdx) = useState(0);
const (hovering, setHovering) = useState(false);

const reorderedTabs = (
tabs(activeIdx),
…tabs.filter((_, i) => i !== activeIdx),
);

{tabs.map((tab, idx) => {
const isActive = idx === activeIdx;
return (
    handleSelect(idx)}
    onMouseEnter={() => setHovering(true)}
    onMouseLeave={() => setHovering(false)}
    className={cn(“relative px-4 py-2 rounded-full”, tabClassName)}
    style={{ transformStyle: “preserve-3d” }}
    >
    {isActive && (
       
)}

      {tab.title}
     
  
);
})}

const FadeInStack = ({ className, tabs, hovering }: FadeInStackProps) => {
  return (
    

      {tabs.map((tab, idx) => (
        
          {tab.content}
        
      ))}
    
  );
};

export default function AnimatedTabMotion() {
  return (
    
  );
}

const tabs = (
  {
    title: "Overview",
    value: "overview",
    content: (
      

        
Product Overview
        

          Our platform helps teams ship faster with a fully integrated design-to-code workflow.
        
      
    ),
  },
  // ...
);

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