Vertical tabs preview now available in the Canary and Dev channels

Microsoft

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.

 

VerticalTabs1.gif

 

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 Icon1.png 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 Icon2.png again.

 

Get the most out of your tabs

VerticalTabs2.gif

 

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 Icon3.png. 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 Icon4.png 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 Icon5.png 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.

 

VerticalTabs3.gif

 

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 Icon4.png.

 

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

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!
Dennis5mile

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.

@William DevereuxYay! And I already had vertical tabs since August 6 this year. I sent feedback to the Microsoft Edge team and I woke up the next morning early (at about 6:00 AM) And I sat down right in front of my laptop and with a excited and hopeful click on the Microsoft Edge Dev icon, Voila! I got vertical tabs!

@William Devereux Good Day 

On the latest Canary Build Version 88.0.682.0 and I can't find it anywhere either in the flags or under setting and appearance. I had it in 88.0.681.0 but after a forced close of the browser it was no longer available. 

 

When will it be available to all canary builds? 

Weird that vertical tabs were available in the last dev build 🤔

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.

@Deleted Aha, thanks for editing this! So, you're going to release vertical tabs to Stable Edge tomorrow?

@Kam Good observation! There was a change to this week's Dev release schedule, so I wanted to adjust expectations appropriately.

 

Fawkes (they/them)
Program Manager & Community Manager - Microsoft Edge

@Deleted Does that mean I'm right?

So, you're going to release vertical tabs to Stable Edge tomorrow?

 

@Kam Not quite! Our releases are sequential, so if a feature comes out in version 88 of Canary, then it will likely not be in Stable until version 88 matures and moves all the way through. Here's our rough release timelines for new versions: Microsoft Edge release schedule | Microsoft Docs

 

Fawkes (they/them)
Program Manager & Community Manager - Microsoft Edge

@William Devereux Few days back I found that dragging a link and dropping it in title bar makes the link open in a new tab or the chosen tab, but This feature isn't working with Vertical tab, so, If possible, add this functionality to vertical tabs also.

 

Thank you.

Yes, good notice. This is also a very useful feature that many uses quite often. This should be implemented before we can switch to vertical tabs full time along with quick tab close suggestion that I already mentioned above (https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/articles/vertical-tabs-preview-now-available-in-the-canary-an...).

@William Devereux Downloaded DEV from:

https://c2rsetup.officeapps.live.com/c2r/downloadEdge.aspx?ProductreleaseID=Edge&platform=Default&ve...

and vertical tabs isn't available.

cjenk114_0-1603923491497.png

 

 

Why is it that nothing from MSFT ever works 1st time?

@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.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.

@rjtiwari10 

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.

 

@MahamKali Yes, when we hover over the website's favicon, we should get an "x" button.

@William Devereux 

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.

@Kam @rjtiwari10 

We can use Mouse Middle Button to Close Tab (unless you are using Laptop)

This is pretty neat when comparing closing the X button.