Missing "X" to close tabs

Hmmm- It seems that this problem is solved for everyone by Resetting Safari then Force quitting safari then removing it from docks then placing it back on docks again...I feel left out, as that hasnt worked for me! 😟 Am I the only person that this method doesnt work for, I still can't find any small little "X" on the tab buttons, and still have no idea how to get it back. boooo! Please can anyone help?

Force Quitting Safari solved it for me when none of the other suggestions would. Also, you'll want to make sure Adobe Reader is completely quit out of. If Adobe comes up in your Force Quit window, get rid of that too.

Force quit and reset didn't work for me. What worked for me was going to Preferences under Safari, selecting Tabs then making sure the "When a new tab or window opens, make it active" box was checked. It is the second of three boxes. Once I checked that box, the X appeared again for all of my tabs.

Excellent! This forum is great. I have an older MacBook, OS X 10.6.8. The HD's getting pretty full and the old girl's running slower, having trouble with more than a few tabs open at a time in Safari especially if I have other applications running. Safari is causing weird problems to crop up that I've never seen before, like the cursor freezing, or this completely new problem with the "x" disappearing from the tabs.

However, I did exactly as Applesfanatic said -- reset Safari, clear downloads, force quit, drag icon out of dock (I love making that little puff of smoke), drag it back in -- and there was the "x" again, totally operational.

I'll move a bunch of music and photos to storage and off my HD and free up some memory, and see if it runs more smoothly. In the meantime, thanks, Applesfanatic-- and the people who shared the  + w command to close tabs!

I just had the same problem and a nice miss just helped me out. Go to the top and under Safari and reset all the things. Restart safari and that should do the trick!

Reset worked for me. Bummer to lose all my saved info, but I'll get over it. Nice to see Safari working properly again.

Exit and restart worked for me. And conveniently, Lion remembers all my tabs! 🙂

switching back to non-full screen mode and then back to full screen seemed to restore the close boxes for me.

My x's disappeared after installing Glims. I have switched back and forth between full screen and regular screen, I reset Safari, I forced closed Safari...I still don't have my x's ....

It's not a Lion specific problem, I'm getting it with Safari 5.1 in Snow Leopard.

Cmd+W will close the current tab btw.

I'm using Snow Leopard and Safari 5.1. The "x" to close the tab suddently disappeared, but I was able to fix it by Force Quitting Safari. Thanks for the suggestion!

I also have this problem, for no obvious reason. Sloppy and annoying, Apple.

This is really driving me nuts. Jesus, Apple, how hard is it to fix this? And how did this ever get through "testing" in the first place?

In Safari 5.1, you see the (x) when you hover over the little favicon in the tab.

The 'x' button is back! Hooray! Thank you very much! 😁