How to Switch to Vertical Tabs in Edge Chromium
The experimental Edge sidebar has been available in Edge Canary since August, but this much-requested feature is now available in the browser developer build. This brings it one step closer to the stable version that most of us use. In the meantime, you can check out this feature in advance in the Edge Chromium Dev and Canary builds. (We recommend the former, which will be much more stable than the latter for everyday use.)
- Download Edge Dev or Edge Canary and open a browser.
- Click the tab icon in the upper left corner of the window to use the vertical tab menu. Click the icon again to return to the horizontal tab bar.
All the usual tab functions work with vertical tabs. Click and drag the tabs to change their order in the menu, click the + sign to open a new tab, or the X sign to close them, and right-click a tab to open the tab management menu where you can pin tabs, mute, refresh, and more.
There are also some controls for vertical tabs:
- Click and drag the side of the vertical tab bar to resize it.
- Click the < icon at the top of the list of tabs to collapse the strip.
After some time with this early incarnation of Edge’s vertical tabs, I understand why they are so much in demand. It’s much easier to control and see how you open tabs, and hiding the list of tabs gives Edge an “open” layout, especially if you’re already hiding other browser toolbars. However, I have experienced a few unexpected crashes when using the Dev build, although this is not necessarily a vertical tab menu bug.
Edge Canary and Edge Dev are the most experimental insider builds of Edge, containing all sorts of tweaks and features developers can try, but they’re also more volatile – expect crashes and bugs if you use them. Fortunately, Edge Dev and Canary install as separate apps and don’t overwrite your regular Edge browser, so it’s at least easy to switch back if you run into problems.
Alternatively, use the Vertical Tabs Chrome browser add-on in Edge.
We don’t know when the new tab menu will appear in the stable version of Edge, but you can install the Vertical Tabs Chrome extension for a short-term workaround that doesn’t require unstable versions of the browser – or others if you’re not a fan of this add-on in particular.
The Vertical Tabs add-on does basically the same thing as Edge, with one important exception: the regular horizontal tab menu still appears at the top of the browser, not just vertical tabs. I’ve been looking for a way to hide the normal tab bar in Edge preferences and in the vertical tabs add-in config, but your only real option is to view in full screen (F11).
I also noticed some strange bugs when vertical tabs are enabled in Edge, such as registering clicks on the wrong part of the page. This was especially noticeable (and annoying) when moving the cursor in Google Docs.
Based on my experience with the Edge vertical tabs feature and the Vertical Tabs add-in, I recommend downloading the Dev or Canary build and using that version if you want to try the Edge vertical tab option early.
[ ZDNet ]