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 like the idea, the current 2-way Pin button on vertical tabs can become a 3-way Pin button.

1)Pin to expanded view 2)Pin to collapsed view 3)UnPin expand/collapse automatically

if you haven't already, make sure to submit it using the feedback button on Edge, it's very interesting.
@985343, these are obviously somewhat subjective and I respect what you described would work well for you. I just want to note for the thread that for me, the chief benefit of vertical tabs is to be able to have many tabs open and still be able to read the name of the tabs without hovering over each. For this to have any value to me, it requires the expanded view on the left to see the text. A common use case for my team is testing our own web development, so all the tabs have the same favicon and may even start with the same first word (the domain name), so it's only when the tab pane is wide enough that the text can be long enough to read the unique page name to know what each tab is.

A colleague who's also testing using the Vertical Tabs features in an entirely different way, loves it for the same reason: she pointed out that now when she's shopping on Amazon, she can have open 20+ tabs for comparing products an Amazon and still see all the tabs and their names, something that was impossible before vertical tabs (they'd all be squashed together at the top). Like in my example, they all have the same Amazon favicon, so unless she can see the text, she can't distinguish the tabs from each other.

So even if providing an option like Christian requested, please also preserve the ability to see the text.
I'm Japanese senior. I like very much "Vertical tabs". It's very operational!
Loving the vertical tabs, can we also put forward:

Tab Groups - group tabs with custom headers.

Tab Containers - one browser, tabs that can be assigned by profile. Look at Firefox containers - amazing with no need to open two browsers.

@BW_TJ 


@BW_TJ wrote:
Loving the vertical tabs, can we also put forward:

Tab Groups - group tabs with custom headers.

Tab Containers - one browser, tabs that can be assigned by profile. Look at Firefox containers - amazing with no need to open two browsers.

I love your Tab containers idea,
about tab groups with custom headers, you can give each tab group custom names.

 

right-click on the tab group icon.

 

image.png

 

Amazing, got the groups set up and they definitely elevate the Vertical Tabs setup. The next wish I guess would be to resume tabs and groups when you close and re-open a browser.
And a facility to "Shrink" or "Fold" the group - not simply close it, just fold it so I can see the other tabs - Edge is beginning to look like file explorer :)

@LegacyOfherot 


@LegacyOfherot wrote:
And a facility to "Shrink" or "Fold" the group - not simply close it, just fold it so I can see the other tabs - Edge is beginning to look like file explorer :)

Try turning on this flag and then click on the tab group colored icon.
edge://flags/#edge-tab-groups-collapse

 

Perfect. Thats what I wanted.

Tab groups were added so eloquently to edge; as I also use Vivialdi and this experimental feature for edge is very well done, as with vertical tabs. 

There is one issue with tab groups; one cannot simple select a tab then trigger a keyboard short-cut followed by a drop down list where one should place the tab in which group.