Summary

When running a notebook that has a lot of cells, it can be hard to keep track of where the currently executing cell is. It becomes harder when the currently running cell is out of the viewport, so the user has to scan to notebook to find the correct one. See example below, where is the running cell?

Concepts

These are all a collection of different ideas that I've explored. We can combine some of these different ideas together or treat them as separate items.

Status bar item

A simple option would be to add a status bar item that says Running cell XX (8.2s) and clicking on it would take you to the running cell:

Adding indicators

In addition to this, we could also add indicators in the outline view and editor tab. This is helpful for when you have the outline view open or you are on a different tab and want to know if a notebook is still running.

Adding item in notebook toolbar

We could also add an action in the toolbar that will take you directly there, though we have to battle with the other actions to make this visible:

Alternatively, we could turn the kernel picker into a split action that and change the icon of the kernel into progress:

Notifications

For the cases where a notebook can take a while longer (+1min) we could look into showing a notification if the user has focus somewhere else (like anther notebook)