Question

I understand this is not possible, but is there a workaround so I can use both tabs and a custom titlebar without having to request the titlebar in each individual activity?

Answer 1

You can create a Custom title bar for your TabActivity. so that both Tabs will be there and Custom Title bar, and further you can refer to the title bar from any activity with in the tabs by using the context of TabActivity.

Check this link for the tutorial of creating custom title bar for any activity
http://www.helloandroid.com/tutorials/how-create-custom-titlebar

so using this tutorial you can create custom-titlebar for your TabActivity

hope it helps…

Update for comment

you can add a method like this in you tab activity for updating the Title. use your own custom layout for title. update the fields in the method.

here for example im using one layout with one TextView

 public void setMyTitle(String str)
{
    MainTab.mTab.getWindow().setFeatureInt(Window.FEATURE_CUSTOM_TITLE, R.layout.my_title);
    TextView title=(TextView) findViewById(R.id.titleText);
    title.setText(str);
}

and in Your TabActivity class

static MainTab mTab;//initialize the context of TabActivity from on create method

in onCreate() of TabActivity class

mTab=this; 

and from any activity with in the Tab you can set the title like this.

 MainTab.mTab.setMyTitle("MyTitle is ");