Forum Discussion
MicrosoftVertical tabs preview now available in the Canary and Dev channels
Tomorrow, we’re releasing an early preview of vertical tabs in Microsoft Edge. This feature, which is now available in the Canary and Dev channels, allows you to find and manage large numbers of tabs quicker and easier than ever before.
Many of you we’ve spoken with have expressed difficulties with managing more than a few open tabs. It’s easy to open dozens of tabs while shopping or researching online, and it’s not uncommon to leave tabs open as a reminder for later—sometimes for days or weeks at a time. As more tabs are opened, it can become difficult to see which tab is which. And eventually you run out of room for new tabs altogether.
If this sounds familiar, we suggest trying out vertical tabs. This layout preserves space for all your tabs, so that you can easily see and scan the tab titles. Managing them from this layout is also easier, with a more intuitive interface for things like drag and drop.
Wide screens have become the norm over the last decade or so, but most websites are still designed with a narrower width that leaves unused space on either side of the content. Vertical tabs takes advantage of this unused space to show you more of your tabs without sacrificing how much content you can see at once. And with the ability to scroll through your tabs, you’re free to open as many as you want.
Your tabs, your way
Getting started is easy. Just click the vertical tabs icon in the top-left corner of the browser. You can switch back to horizontal tabs at any time by clicking on the vertical tabs icon again.
Get the most out of your tabs
Vertical tabs also makes it easier than ever to manage your tabs. Here’s a few things you can try:
- Reorder and manage multiple tabs at once: Select multiple tabs at once by holding down either Ctrl or Shift and clicking on the tabs you want to manage. From here, you can reorder the tabs, drag them into a new window, or even close, refresh, duplicate, pin, or mute them all at once.
- Mute noisy tabs: Quickly silence tabs playing audio in the background by clicking on the speaker icon . This makes it easy to mute noisy tabs without leaving the tab you’re on.
- Pin your favorite tabs: Do you frequently rely on certain websites? Right-click on the tab and select pin to move it to a dedicated section at the top of the tab list so the site is always just a click away. Edge will even remember your pinned tabs across browser sessions
See more of the web
Of course, sometimes you need to focus on just the tab in front of you. Or maybe you’re on a device with a smaller screen. Simply click the collapse icon to shrink the size of the vertical tabs pane and instantly see more of the web. The favicons of your tabs will remain visible on the left, so your tabs are still always at your fingertips.
Click on one of the tab previews to instantly switch tabs, or hover your mouse over the collapsed pane to see the full tab info. Of course, you can always pin the pane open again at any time by hovering over the sidebar and selecting the pin button .
Send us feedback
This is just the beginning of vertical tabs, and we’d love to hear what you think of the new experience. Please send us feedback if something isn’t working right. And if there’s a feature you’d like to see added to vertical tabs, we’re excited to hear that too.
Thanks for being part of this early preview! We look forward to hearing your feedback.
— William Devereux, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Edge
— Jerin Schneider, Principal Program Manager, Microsoft Edge
William Devereux Vertical Tabs Feature is going to the one of the best one.
I really like it but one thing is really annoying on this mode.
When ever we use vertical tabs the webpage title is showing as a big Title bar in the top of the browser, which is a really space eater like in this image which one attached to this post.title bar is not good.
My suggestion is remove the website title bar and move the address bar to top, this will give more space and looks like full screen browsing experience without using F11 shortcut.
Consider this idea.
Thank You.
- One suggestion I want to share. Everything related to Vertical tabs is looking good & quite useful but one thing is impacting user friendliness as compared to usual top tabs bar. There is no "X" button to quickly close the tabs when in collapsed state. Whenever we hover over a tab, the pane expands but the "X" button comes at right most side and we have to move our mouse over there to close it. It's really tedious sometimes when you want maximum space on screen and quickly want to get something.
Hope you guys able to get my suggestion. There should be something to close tabs quickly (in a click or so) in collapsed vertical pane.Yes. You are right, closing tabs in vertical mode is really not quick as we do in normal mode.
My suggestion is replace the "X" button left side on the before favicon or simply add a shortcut like holding ctrl or shift keys, when holding shortcut key the tab favicon automatically show "X" icon without pane expand.
Just consider this idea.
rjtiwari10 I'd also like to see a dialog when I click the X of the main bowser window, if I have more than one tab open, it should ask "Close the current tab or all tabs" like Adobe does with pdfs.
it's a great feature to be honest, I love using it.
One important thing is that, in order to view more and get more out of websites when using vertical tabs, the top area that was previously the place to show tabs, should be removed.
so, when the tab strip is vertically displayed on the left, the top area needs to be removed to have more free area for website contents.
Either the close/minimize/maximize buttons should come down and place next to the "..." ellipsis button, Or the address bar and the rest of Edge toolbar should go up next to close/max/min buttons (and the long address bar can shrink in size a little bit).
these 2 horizontal bars need to be merged because there is clearly a lot of space being wasted up there.
HotCakeX, I like the idea of saving space and merging those (especially on smaller screens like a laptop), but I also appreciate having an easy-to-grab title bar to drag and move the window.
What do you think about only doing what you said when maximizing the window -- in that situation, the title bar is not needed to drag the window and that's also the case where the user is clearly trying to make the viewable area as large as possible. When the window is not maximized, keep the title bar so it's easy to grab and move the window (maybe still vertically compress it a little bit, but don't lose it).
That sounds good too, they need to first add vertical tabs to full screen mode in Edge
I like the vertical tabs... but please include the option to reverse the order. I have so many tabs open that I keep having to scroll down to get to the latest ones. If the tab list could be reversed, then my most recent and frequently used tabs would automatically be at the top and the older and less frequently used tabs would be tucked down at the bottom.
- Yes, very good suggestion. Also, it's very annoying that "+ New tab" button keeps getting lower with each new tab opened and then we have to find it lower & lower to open new tab. I know we can use Ctrl+tab shortcut but opening new tab with mouse becomes too lengthy. "+ New tab" button should be sticky on top for more seamless experience.
- Yeah, I think the new tab button (+) should be on top and always stay in the same position.
- not avail to me why not running edge dev
William Devereux do not have on my computer
kevin urquhart I don't either. I am using Linux so maybe that is it?
- userzerozerozero I think so.
- William Devereux
We've been flighting vertical tabs to some users and only just increased the rollout to 100%. If you don't see it yet, you should soon. You can also try restarting your browser 2-3 times to see if that forces the feature to appear early.
It would have been nice in case you would be able to have hybrid scenario like both vertical tab and horizontal tab. It required some UX investigation.
- Is it possible to add the ability to move vertical tabs to the right side of the window?
goran-stefanovic, I like that idea (as long as it's just an option, not a requirement). I would like to see it on the right-click menu for the tab space (rather than a Settings option), so it's easy to move at any time. Once changed, it should just retain that position until changed again. That would do 2 things:
1. Fit with my "Vertical tabs as overflow" suggestion to make it more consistent with how the Favorites Bar puts extra overflow Favorites on the right.
2. Allow the user to select which side of the window to effectively "hide" the tabs by just moving the window to the edge of the monitor so part of the window is off-screen. Currently, this only works with the Edge window against the left edge of the screen.
I've had vert tabs for only about week or so now and I've only had one problem. I use sleeping tabs as well and all is functioning. I love it and have been dying to try it out since way back in March or so when I first read about them and now I can. 🙂 I have this in Dev as well, but I'm mostly a Canary user and use Dev mostly when Can is not functioning correctly.
Love being able to click several tabs in random order and more them all at once to wherever I want... Tab preview works great as well on Vert tabs.
The only problem I've ran across is a sleeping tab will not wake up and I have to refresh that page, which is not a problem I have ran across in the horizontal tabs. But that is the only problem I've had..
All in All, LOVE IT!
Dennis5mileWilliam Devereux Downloaded DEV from:
and vertical tabs isn't available.
Why is it that nothing from MSFT ever works 1st time?
- Found the issue! It installs a different Exe. So shortcuts to existing Edge don't point to the new version.
