Vertical tabs preview now available in the Canary and Dev channels

[William Devereux]

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

[#2]

@William Devereux 

New Flag in canary Version 88.0.685.0 (Official build) canary (64-bit).  However; it might not be available to everyone... 

 

Dennis5mile

[#3]

@William Devereux 

This function is for linux?

[#4]

@William Devereux Vertical Tabs is really amazing but can we have a *little more screen space by combining the title bar and the address bar while in vertical mode, please?

[#5]

@William Devereux  I don't have yet this feature in the 88.0.680.1 dev build. Is there something I'm missing on how to enable this feature since in my build there's no button? Anyone else with this problem?

[#6]

Verticle tabs on Mac when not in full-screen works but when you are in full-screen verticle tabs reverts back to the horizontal tabs.

Also, can we get both tab previews within verticle tabs when both tab previews become available?

Last thing. The ability to choose if we want tab previews on the left or right side of the screen and the same with collections.

[#7]

But we have an issue: "New Tab" you can't setup

[#8]

@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. 

[#9]

@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).

[#10]

@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. 

[#11]

I'm on the latest version of Dev (macos) and there is no "vertical tabs icon" at all 😕

[#12]

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???????????????

[#13]

@GraniteStateColin 

That sounds good too, they need to first add vertical tabs to full screen mode in Edge 

[#14]

Dragging links to the vertical tabs does not create a new tab with the link. It works correctly in horizontal tabs. Feedback sent.

[#15]

Yeah!
I love that feature, Hope they add it soon

[#16]

@HotCakeX, I see the vertical tabs work when the window is maximized, but not when it's truly full-screen (pressing F11) without any chrome visible, but I don't see horizontal tabs then either.

[#17]

@William Devereux Any update on this?

[#18]

@William Devereux You are building a browser for the lefties. 

[#19]

........ huh?

[#20]

@Alexei_Drekker  Vertical tabs should be on the right side of the screen.

[#21]

............. OH NOOOOO! That's what you meant! Twitter has completely warped my sense of certain words and their usage. I thought you were talking about something else entirely. MY APOLOGIES!