I believe these buttons are superfluous/redundant and could be removed for a sleeker GUI, imo. I am never using them as the big buttons next to them are doing the same thing (hiding when clicking on an already active one). Maybe I’m missing something?
I haven’t used them yet either, but it’s not like they are taking up a huge amount of space.
Well. They are telling new users they can hide this section. But once you know of that fact, they seem to be clutter mainly.
+1. Not that they are serious distraction, but they are really useless. I think it’s completely logical and natural to hide a panel by clicking on the active tab.