Vertical Tabs in Chrome
I've been using Arc Browser for a long time. Why? Because I love vertical tabs in my browser. They allow me to read more of each tab's title when I have a lot of tabs.
What Are Vertical Tabs?
Tabs are tabs. When we say vertical or horizontal tabs, we're talking about how they're displayed. Vertical tabs are arranged in a vertical stack, instead of a horizontal list.
What's Wrong With Horizontal Tabs?
As horizontal tabs accumulate, they either have to get narrower (less legible) or be scrolled sideways, which is difficult to do with most mice (but not trackpads!).
Are Vertical Tabs New?
Vertical tabs in software applications aren't a new concept. After all, look this macOS Finder window with "tabs" Recents, Shared, etc.:
Tabs in Browsers
Many browsers have had horizontal tabs for a long time. Apparently, horizontal tabs in browsers first appeared in 1997 with SimulBrowse (later NetCaptor) by Adam Stiles. Mozilla picked up and popularized it in 2002. I love this snippet from the interview:
Did you have an "aha!" moment, when you realized that tabbed browsing would be a good thing to put in NetCaptor?
Adam Stiles: NetCaptor (originally SimulBrowse) was built from the beginning to be a tabbed browser. The HTML editor I was using at the time (HomeSite) had tabs, so I was used to flipping between a bunch of HTML documents. I wanted the same thing in my browser, so I built it. At first it was just an experiment to see if I could do it.
From developer tools to the mainstream!
Vertical Tabs in Browsers
From what I can gather, Opera got vertical tabs in 2005. Chrome had an early version that was scrapped, but it officially got them back on April 7, 2026.
Why Leave Arc?
If Arc was working for me, why switch back to Chrome? Well, I use Claude at work and I can't get the currently experimental Claude for Chrome extension to work with Arc.
Enabling Vertical Tabs in Google Chrome
To enable this feature, I had to go to chrome://flags/#vertical-tabs and switch from Default to Enabled. For reference, my installed version of Chrome is Version 147.0.7727.102 (Official Build) (arm64).
Wait, nothing happened. I called my brother. Turns out this flag enables the feature, but the arrangement of tabs still has to be toggled from horizontal to vertical. To do so, secondary click (right click) on a tab and select Show Tabs Vertically.
Voilà! Vertical tabs!
As you can imagine, to switch back to horizontal tabs, do a secondary click (right click) on a tab and select Show Tabs Horizontally.
Aside
Why do I say secondary click instead of right click? Because I'm an insufferable left-handed Mac user that uses mice, vertical and otherwise, and trackpads ambidextrously. So, to me, they're primary and secondary click, not left and right click.
