How Can We Configure TabLayout For a Fixed Visible Number of Scrollable Tabs?

In a project, we are using the Material Design Components' TabLayout with a ViewPager. There are 14 tabs, and we want 7 of those tabs to be visible at a time in the TabLayout. The tab content is narrow enough that we are sure that 7 will not be too many, and the design team wants a consistent number of tabs showing up regardless of screen width (tabs represent days of the week).

None of the pre-defined tab modes seem to match this:

• MODE_FIXED and MODE_AUTO control the number of visible tabs... by showing all of them
• MODE_SCROLLABLE allows the tabs to scroll... but then we do not have control over the number of visible tabs

Is there a way of accomplishing this that does not involve non-maintainable hacks, such as using reflection to tinker with tabPaddingStart at runtime, or iterating over the tab widgets and adjusting their LayoutParams?

I have seen this question, but the explanation is lacking — in particular, it is unclear how to use app:tabMaxWidth for what should be a dynamic value at runtime. Also, that question is about the older Design Support Library, which may differ somewhat with MDC's implementation.

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