Vertical Tabs! Enable control of pin/collapse pane (please!)

Brass Contributor

Edge's native implementation of vertical tabs when combined with tab groups make it an ideal browser for organized productivity and that's why I continue to use it as my daily driver on all desktop platforms.

 

There is just one major pain point I find with using the vertical tab features: toggling its visibility. Of course, using vertical tabs makes more efficient use of screen real-estate (for landscape-oriented displays), but that does mean less screen space for actual webpage content, a reality which becomes obvious with 2+ vertical-tab-enabled browser windows open side-by-side. Thankfully, Edge includes convenient UI buttons to "Collapse" and "Pin" the vertical tab pane's visibility, but this is currently the only way to toggle this behavior, diminishing productivity of keyboard-centric use.


Recently, the Edge team added the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+,(comma) — which switches the UI between vertical and classic tabs at the top. This is great, but it negates the value of having a collapsible vertical tab pane which would still show webpage favicons in the same visual paradigm of a vertical list and feels like a much more natural UI toggle. Some other users in the Edge Insider community have pointed out that such a side-panel collapse/expand key shortcut exists in many other popular programs as well.


I've been trying to find some way of automating the collapse/pin behavior of the vertical tab pane, but it doesn't seem feasible without a proper menu option. Please consider adding a key shortcut specifically for this behavior, or instead include an option in the alt-menu dropdown that can be triggered via something like Power Automate.

 

Thanks again to Edge team for all their work :happyface:

3 Replies
I feel exactly the same way! Also, is it just me or did Microsoft remove the Ctrl+Shift+comma shortcut altogether? I want to use it but seems like it's gone??
I wish they would add this. I submitted this feedback years ago...

In case that someone else is having the same problem when running Edge on a Mac, I managed to pin/unpin the vertical tabs sidebar using BTT (BetterTouchTool, a paid utility app that I use to solve problems like this all the time) with the following actions. I configured these actions to trigger with the CMD + S shortcut (I took this shortcut from Arc browser):
1. save mouse position
2. move mouse to the left
3. delay next action (blocking) 0.6 seconds
4. move mouse to the vertical tabs icon (below the navigate left arrow)
5. delay next action (blocking) 0.3 seconds
6. move the mouse to the point of the screen where the pin icon (or lower-than icon, when is enabled) is shown
7. Left click
8. Restore saved mouse position

I'd like to see this feature included in Edge in the future to avoid workarounds like this for so basic things.