Vertical Tabs are now available to all Microsoft Edge Canary and Dev users

Martin Brinkmann
Oct 29, 2020
Internet, Microsoft Edge
|
15

Microsoft started to work on a vertical tabs implementation in the company's Chromium-based Microsoft Edge web browser some time ago. Designed to move tabs from the horizontal toolbar at the top of the browser interface to a sidebar, it is serving several purposes for users who enable it.

Two of the main advantages of using vertical tabs are that more tabs fit into the sidebar with full length page titles, and that this unlocks management options such as easy reordering of tabs.

The second advantage over the horizontal tab bar is that its removal frees up a bit of vertical space for the display of websites which in turn means more information is displayed directly on the screen. Granted, the sidebar takes away space and that may lead to some display issues on small resolution devices, but Microsoft did add an option that resolves that.

microsoft edge- ertical tabs

The vertical tabs feature was unlocked for some users only for testing purposes; even users who enabled vertical tabs on Edge's Experimental Flags page could not get it to work in the browser if they were not selected for the experiment; this has changed now as all users of Microsoft Edge Canary or Developer may use the feature (once updated to the most recent version).

How does it work?

edge show vertical tabs

Microsoft added a button to the Microsoft Edge tab bar that, when activated, switches between horizontal (default) and vertical tabs in the browser.

The icon is controlled by a preference in the Settings of the web browser. If you don't see it displayed or want it removed, open edge://settings/appearance in the browser's address bar and toggle the "show vertical tabs button" slider on the page under Customize toolbar. A blue slider means that the button to activate vertical tabs in Edge is enabled, a gray one that it is disabled.

Note: if you don't see the button or the setting, load edge://flags/#edge-vertical-tabs and set the flag to Enabled. You need to restart the Edge browser afterwards to complete the change.

A click on the vertical tabs button moves tabs to the sidebar and hides the main horizontal bar in the Edge browser. The button is moved to the sidebar as well, and you may activate it there to return to the horizontal tab bar at any time.

microsoft edge vertical tabs bar collapsed

The process of switching between the two tab display forms is fluent. Users on low resolution devices may collapse the sidebar with a click on the "<" icon that is displayed in its header; this collapses most of the sidebar so that only favicons of the sites opened in the browser are displayed.

Vertical tabs have a number of features attached to them that users may make use of. Hold down the Ctrl-key and use the left mouse button to select multiple tabs and perform multiple operations on all of the tabs, e.g. by right-clicking and selecting mute tabs, adding them to the favorites of the browser, or pinning them to the tab bar. Reordering works with multiple tabs selected, just drag & drop the selection around.

Closing Words

The vertical tabs option in Microsoft Edge works well already, despite it being available only in Canary and Dev versions of the browser. There is still room for improvement, especially if you compare Microsoft's solution to extensions such as Tree Style Tabs which support more features such as tab hierarchies.

Now You: Vertical or horizontal tabs, what is your preference and why? (via Microsoft)

Summary
Vertical Tabs are now available to all Microsoft Edge Canary and Dev users
Article Name
Vertical Tabs are now available to all Microsoft Edge Canary and Dev users
Description
Microsoft unlocked the new vertical tabs feature in the Canary and Dev versions of the company's Microsoft Edge browser.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
    Reply

    Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on August 4, 2012 at 7:57 pm
      Reply

      Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.

    2. Leonidas Burton said on September 4, 2023 at 4:51 am
      Reply

      I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
      http://www.google.com/saved

  2. VioletMoon said on August 16, 2023 at 5:26 pm
    Reply

    @Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!

  3. Karl said on August 17, 2023 at 10:36 pm
    Reply

    @Martin

    The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
    https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/

    Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.

  4. Anonymous said on August 25, 2023 at 11:44 am
    Reply

    Omg a badge!!!
    Some tangible reward lmao.

    It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.

  5. Scroogled said on August 25, 2023 at 10:57 pm
    Reply

    With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.

    1. lollmaoeven said on August 27, 2023 at 6:24 am
      Reply

      This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)

  6. El Duderino said on August 25, 2023 at 11:14 pm
    Reply

    Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.

    And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.

  7. John G. said on August 26, 2023 at 1:29 am
    Reply

    First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[

  8. Kalmly said on August 26, 2023 at 4:42 pm
    Reply

    Yes. Please. Fix the comments.

  9. Kim Schmidt said on September 3, 2023 at 3:42 pm
    Reply

    With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.

    Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.

    The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.

    If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.

    And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.

  10. Anonymous said on September 28, 2023 at 8:19 am
    Reply

    When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?

  11. RIP said on September 28, 2023 at 9:36 am
    Reply

    Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.

    I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.

    1. RIP said on September 28, 2023 at 11:01 am
      Reply

      Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to

  12. RIP said on September 28, 2023 at 10:48 am
    Reply

    Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to

  13. Mystique said on September 28, 2023 at 12:13 pm
    Reply

    Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
    Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/

    No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.

  14. justputthispostanywhere said on September 29, 2023 at 3:59 am
    Reply

    I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/

    My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.

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