Chrome Adds a New Feature to Manage Too Many Open Tabs

Chrome Is the Last Major Browser to Get Here. It Was Worth the Wait.

How many tabs do you have open right now? If the answer is more than a dozen, you already know the problem. Horizontal tabs compress down to nothing, showing only a favicon with no page title, and finding the right tab means hovering over each one individually until you stumble onto what you need. It is a friction point that every other major browser solved years ago.

Google announced on April 7, 2026 that vertical tabs are now rolling out to Chrome on desktop globally. Firefox added them in March 2025. Microsoft Edge has had them for years. Arc built its entire identity around the concept. Chrome is the last holdout among the major browsers to add the feature, and it is now officially available to all users on the latest stable version.

The feature is simple to enable and genuinely changes the experience of working with many tabs simultaneously. Here is everything you need to know.

What Vertical Tabs Actually Do

Vertical tabs move the tab bar from the top of the browser window to the left side, creating a sidebar that lists all open tabs from top to bottom. The core benefit is that page titles remain fully visible regardless of how many tabs you have open. In horizontal mode, titles compress and eventually disappear entirely as you open more tabs. In vertical mode, each tab shows its full or near-full title with the site favicon, making it instantly clear which tab contains what.

The sidebar supports two display states. In the expanded state, you see the site favicon, the full page title, and a close button for each tab. In the collapsed state, the sidebar narrows to show only the site icons, preserving horizontal screen space while still giving you a visual reference for each open tab. You can toggle between expanded and collapsed as needed depending on how much screen real estate you want to allocate.

Tab groups work naturally with vertical tabs. Groups appear as labelled sections within the sidebar, making it significantly easier to manage multiple projects or research threads simultaneously. The tab search function, which lets you search through all open tabs by title, moves to the top of the vertical sidebar.

The setting persists between sessions. Once you switch to vertical tabs, Chrome remembers your preference and opens in vertical mode every time until you manually switch back.

How to Enable Vertical Tabs in Chrome

The simplest method requires no settings or flags. If you are running the latest version of Chrome, the option is directly accessible through a right-click.

Method 1: Right-click (recommended)

1. Make sure Chrome is updated to the latest version. Go to the Chrome menu, select Help, then About Google Chrome, and install any available update 2. Right-click anywhere on the Chrome window above the address bar, in the tab bar area 3. Select Show Tabs Vertically from the context menu 4. Your tabs will immediately move to the left sidebar

That is the entire process. No flags, no settings menus, no restart required.

To switch back to horizontal tabs:

1. Right-click in the vertical sidebar area at the top of the screen 2. Select Move Tabs to Top 3. Your tabs return to the standard horizontal bar

One note for macOS users: the right-click menu to switch back does not appear while Chrome is in full-screen mode. Exit full screen first, then right-click to access the option.

Method 2: Chrome Flags (for testing builds)

If you want to try the feature on Chrome Beta, Dev, or Canary before it rolls out fully to stable:

1. Open Chrome Beta or Canary 2. Type `chrome://flags/#vertical-tabs` in the address bar 3. Set the flag to Enabled from the dropdown 4. Click Relaunch at the bottom of the screen 5. After relaunch, right-click the tab area and select Show Tabs Vertically, or go to Settings, then Appearance, and change Tab strip position from Top to Side

The stable version rollout is global and ongoing as of April 7. Most users running the latest Chrome version will see the option immediately.

Working With the Vertical Tab Sidebar

Once vertical tabs are enabled, a few interactions are worth knowing.

Collapse and expand the sidebar. Click the arrow icon at the top of the sidebar to toggle between the expanded view with full titles and the collapsed view with icons only. The collapsed view is useful on smaller screens or when you want more horizontal space for the page content itself.

Search your tabs. The Tab Search button moves to the top of the vertical sidebar. Click it or use the keyboard shortcut to search through all open tabs by title. This is particularly useful when you have 30 or 40 tabs open and need to find something specific without scrolling the entire list.

Manage tab groups. Tab groups you have created appear as labelled, collapsible sections within the sidebar. Creating a new tab group works the same as before: right-click any tab and select Add Tab to New Group, name the group, and assign a color. The group then appears as its own section in the sidebar.

Create new tabs. The new tab button sits at the bottom of the vertical sidebar. Click it to open a new tab without leaving the sidebar view.

Reorder tabs. Drag and drop tabs within the sidebar to reorder them. The same drag behavior that works in horizontal mode works vertically.

What Changed With Reading Mode

Chrome also updated Reading Mode on the same day, and the change is significant enough to mention alongside vertical tabs.

Previously, Reading Mode opened in a side panel that appeared beside the normal webpage, effectively splitting your screen between the original page with all its clutter and a simplified text version next to it. The new implementation is full-page. When you right-click any page and select Open in reading mode, Chrome strips away ads, navigation menus, images, sidebars, and visual clutter and presents the text content in a clean, focused full-page view.

To use it: right-click anywhere on a page and select Open in reading mode. To exit, close the tab or navigate away.

The full-page implementation is more comparable to Safari's Reader View, which has offered a similar experience for years. Chrome's version does not include images in the simplified view, while Safari's Reader does preserve relevant images within the text flow.

Why Chrome Took This Long

Chrome has been tested vertical tabs internally before. The feature appeared in an earlier decade in beta form and was never promoted to stable release. This time, the development cycle progressed through Chrome Beta in January 2026 with a flag-enabled preview before shipping to stable in April.

The timing reflects competitive pressure. Alternative browsers including Arc, Vivaldi, Firefox, and Edge have offered vertical tabs as a differentiated feature. As Arc in particular built a following among power users partly on the strength of its sidebar tab management, Chrome's absence of the feature became an increasingly cited reason to consider switching. Shipping vertical tabs closes that gap and removes one of the more practical arguments for leaving Chrome.

Conclusion

Vertical tabs are live in Chrome today and take about three seconds to enable. If you regularly work with more than ten tabs open, the difference in usability is immediate and meaningful. Full page titles, collapsible sidebar, integrated tab groups, and persistent preferences make the feature a genuine productivity improvement rather than a cosmetic change.

The feature is opt-in and reversible. Right-click to try it, right-click to undo it. There is no reason not to test it.

If you are building web or mobile applications and want a development partner who understands browser capabilities and how they affect product design and user experience, please reach out to MonkDA. We build web and mobile products for teams at every stage of development.