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
131 Replies
William Devereux I think they are a great start, although there are a few things that could be improved.
· the title bar now takes up all the space that used to be consumed by the tabs, this is unfortunate as I was really looking forward to gaining more vertical page space by using vertical tabs
· the NewTab button is at the bottom of the list and therefore moves constantly - putting it at the top would have meant there was always a single place to click for a new tab.
· the tab bar isn't resizable - it would be nice to be able to expand it sometimes to read more of the tab titles.
· there is no visual link between the current tab and the displayed page
· it's weird that the back button is now to the left of the tabs.A (very)rough mockup of what I was hoping for would be something like this:
I do love the ability to "pin" tabs though, that's going to be great 😄
dgkimpton, I think I disagree with most of these (but not strongly). Certainly, I have nothing against them being options, but to give MS alternative feedback on these:
1. The title bar already narrows SLIGHTLY (admittedly, not enough to really add any screen real estate to the page). I'm OK with it shrinking a bit more, but I do think it's important to keep an area at the top for easily grabbing the window to drag and move it.
2. The new tab button for horizontal tabs is always at the right end and already moves based on the number of tabs. I think the vertical tab button should follow that for consistency.
3. Resizeable pane for tabs -- I'm neutral on this one. There are times when I would like to make it wider or narrower to see more of the text or make the window narrower, but I also appreciate that it maintains a consistent width. If it had the ability to change its width, I'd use it. Maybe consider how this works in the Outlook application -- it is possible to resize the panes, but only within a fairly minor range.
4. No visual link between the current tab and the displayed page -- Yes there is. At least for me, the current tab is highlighted. Maybe this is a bug if it's not for everyone?
5. Weird that back button is to left of tabs -- I definitely don't think this should change. The button positions at the top of the window should remain as they are for consistency.
Good UI innovations should never break consistency. Consistency is most important in UI, so any improvements should always ensure consistency is maintained. That doesn't mean UI can't evolve and improve (they definitely should), just that any changes must be holistic to preserve UI consistency.
GraniteStateColin 1. in the mockup I did leave a couple of pixels for dragging (exactly the same as in the current Edge when you have lots of tabs open in fact), I absolutely agree that losing that ability would suck outrageously. I don't see any great value in having the document title up there though - in horizontal-mode, we don't have it either. I assume they put the title there because the min/max/restore icons were already there and just leaving a giant empty space would look weird.
2. Strangely being at the end in horizontal mode never bothered me, but being at the bottom just feels continuously irritating. I'd got as far as to say I in fact expect newly opened tabs to appear at the top of the list too - just something about my mental model of a stack I guess.
4. The tab is highlighted, but not linked to the main window - in horizontal mode, there is a clear indication that the highlighted tab also links to the window. This is, admittedly, a very minor issue.
5. We're just going to have to disagree here - I don't believe consistency (especially between modes that won't be used at the same time) is that paramount. Daily workflow and visual comprehensibility are way more important than being consistent for the sake of it. That's not to say consistency is unimportant, just that it definitely doesn't come so high up my list.
William Devereux Loved vertical tabs, but can we have reverse ordering as an option? Not only does it make noticing tab loading and new tab opening much easier (at top always same position), if the + button can be at the top as well then it would make better muscle memory for opening new tab with mouse operation.
jateruy, yes, an option to flip the order would be nice. I agree.
William Devereux Even considering Collections, which I think is great, I believe vertical tabs is primed to be the killer feature for Edge. Super-power users who like total control are already either using Vivaldi or some obscure browser we haven't heard of. But there are lots of people who aren't exactly itching to spend hours tweaking every aspect of their browser, but nonetheless wish Chrome was a little more flexible and a little less stale. I think those people will really be attracted to Edge's vertical tabs. Personally, I can't wait for this to trickle into the stable channel so I can use it at the office.
William Devereux Try Dev Channel and Canari Channel and neither work. No Vertical Tabs symbol at top left.
So I conclude it's not ready again. Hope you will change the titles.
P.,-S.
Be able to sort the replies would be good. Don't understand why this option is not already available.
- Classicoynes Enable Vertical Tabs here: edge://flags/#edge-vertical-tabs
Check if you have the latest version here: edge://help
P.S. "Canary" not "Canari"Kam Microsoft Edge is up to date.Version 88.0.688.0 (Official build) canary (64-bit)
And no Vertical Tabs at Top Left.
Like you see it's Canary (sorry for mistake Canari)
And of course I follow what you say:
- Launch Edge Canary and pay a visit to edge://flags
- Search for the word shy and use the dropdown menus to enable the Enable Fullscreen dropdown and Enable Swipe to ShyUI options
- Restart Edge
William Devereux You are building a browser for the lefties.
- ........ huh?
Alexei_Drekker Vertical tabs should be on the right side of the screen.
- Dragging links to the vertical tabs does not create a new tab with the link. It works correctly in horizontal tabs. Feedback sent.
- can i say please for all of us replying to this thread we want to participate in the bells and whistles that is why i downloaded edge dev. browser and now you post messages that x is now available when they are not yet implimented in my copy of edge dev. are you understanding our frustration???????????????
- I'm on the latest version of Dev (macos) and there is no "vertical tabs icon" at all 😕
William Devereux, love the feature. Now that I've been using it for a while, I find that I turn it off when only using a few tabs, then turn it back on when I get enough tabs at the top that they start graphically compressing to make them fit and I can't read enough text to tell what they are (often have several tabs with the same favicon, so the icon alone doesn't help). This has led me to realize I would like to have it use horizontal tabs at first, then vertical tabs as an overflow when the title bar is full. I realize not everyone would want this, so I'd ask that this be an added option with Vertical tabs: something like "Use Vertical tabs as overflow".
From a UI consistency perspective, we already have something like this with the Favorites Bar: all new added Favorites appear in the bar, until it's full, then they wrap into the vertical drop-down. In that case, there's a drop-down for the excess Favorites. With tabs, I think it should be always visible, exactly like a you've done it now.
- But we have an issue: "New Tab" you can't setup
