Missing "X" to close tabs

Yes, it's happening to me, too. But I haven't opened a PDF in a tab since upgrading to Lion. Clicking on a different tab and then clicking back to the one I want to close will bring back the "X." Sometimes hovering works, and sometimes it doesn't. It's been inconsistent, but I feel like it's happening most with new tabs that the "X" fails to appear until I click away and then click back. For the moment I'm adjusting to command-w to close a tab (which I never realized would work, I don't think of a tab as a window.) If you find a fix for this odd behavior I'd love to know.

I've now lost all my saved top sites and the problem is still there, nice one. Can anyone help with recovering deleted top sites please?

My Safari tabs were missing the close button as well. I tried the Safari->Reset Safari with no luck, I deleted the com.apple.safari.plist as well. What ended up working for me was ->Force Quit->Safari. I noticed quitting Safari from the Dock does not completely close it out, and from the Safari->Quit Safari menu option is grayed out. Force quit seemed to be the only way to end it.

This is not a Lion issues .. or at least I am having the same issue and I am on Snow Leopard 10.6.8.

it happended to me right after I did an update for iTunes .. do not know if the issues are related. But .. would REALLY like my tabs back.

This happens for me from time to time. BUT you can still close tabs using COMMAND-W. So you don't have to jump through hoops to keep memory usage down. Safari seems to be a huge memory hog and the 2 gig that came with my '10 MBA doesn't seem to cut it with Lion. 😢

Lion does appear to need more RAM than Snow Leopard. I'm getting far more beachballs on my Late '11 MBP than I ever got on Snow Leopard on a '08 Alu MacBook, and it's purely down to it paging out on the same 4GB of RAM.

SAFARI ----> Reset Safari (after selecting just four of the below options).

Just select in reset safari window

1. Clear History

2. Clear the Downloads window

3. Close al safari windows

4. Reset all location warnings

Then  (apple icon) ---> force quit ---> safari

Then remove the Safari icon from the DOCK

Then pull back the Safari icon from the Application to the Dock

These steps worked for me - X is been restored - Oh FYI - I have snow leopard 10.6.8.

Boy am I relieved I'm not the only person this is happening to.

I've been Control Clicking the individual tabs to close them.

Thanks to whoever first mentioned Cmd+W. That's a handy command!

Don't really need the silly "x" now, lol.

Der.

Thanks for the advice all, it was bugging me when mine disappeared, seemed to be linked with ITunes upgrade for me. I managed to get the x back simply by Force Quit (didn't go through the reset process) and nothing was lost. I know cmd w works but I like my x!

I agree. Why do I have to work around. Can Apple fix the bug. I had nothinbg but problem after using jumping from Snow leopard to Lion. Reviewed the web, just to find I am not alone, just about the only thing I am glad to know. Well Apple, be smart, fix the problem and fix it soon. You are just looking like Windows Vista. Remember, bad news travel fast. I just bought my desktop few months ago because I like Apple, but it will be the last product I will buy, for my iPhone, Hello Samsung next year !

Thank spungeemanx,

I had tried the force quit and it worked. But I just don't understand why I had to do that to get out of a program. The problem exist since I bought my new iMAC since in 2011 X'mas. The problem still exist. My Snow Leopard works fine bso I am no hurry to upgrad that to Lion and so is my family and other friends. The work around do the trick, but why should i have to do that?

Thank you for your suggestion.

H5N1

Experiencing the absent [x] tab closer icon, and absent status bar text (updated when mousing over hyperlinks, etc). Didn't expect it would have an effect, but Force Quit (cmd+alt+esc) and restart Safari solved it for me. Once anyway.

Safari Version 5.1.5 (6534.55.3)

Snow Leopard 10.6.8

Same problem. Resets and restarts can temporarily clear the issue but it comes back. It sounds like a bug and it shouldn't occur in the first place, is Apple investigating this?

Mac OS X 10.7.4

Safari 6.0

I had to do a ForceQuit Safari. The menu item Safari->QuitSafari was grayed out. I killed it from the ActivityMonitor. Even though all my safari windows were closed, killing safari freed up 1 gig of SystemMemory. (I wonder what it was doing/running?) When I started safari again the missing X on the tabs was found. You could probably accomplish the same thing by rebooting your Mac. I did not need to delete/reset my preferences.

This worked the best for me and i kind of wish i read it before i read the reset one.
I say force quit it first and when push comes to shove reset it second because it seems like either one or the other works for most people