Chrome Vertical Tabs Are Coming Soon: How to Test Them Now

At Magisk Modules, we understand the importance of a streamlined and efficient browsing experience. The digital workspace is evolving rapidly, and power users require tools that adapt to their workflow, not the other way around. For years, the standard horizontal tab strip has been a source of clutter, forcing users to juggle countless icons that offer little visual context beyond the first few pixels. Google has finally responded to this widespread demand by introducing vertical tabs to the Chrome browser. While this highly anticipated feature has not yet reached the stable channel of Chrome, it is currently accessible in the developer and canary builds.

We will provide a comprehensive, step-by-step guide on how to activate and test Chrome vertical tabs immediately. Furthermore, we will dive deep into the user experience implications, the specific settings you need to adjust, and how this feature fundamentally changes the way you navigate the web.

Understanding the Chrome Vertical Tabs Interface

The introduction of vertical tabs represents a significant paradigm shift in Chromium-based browsers. Historically, browsers like Microsoft Edge and Brave have offered this functionality, but Google’s implementation brings a native, polished experience to the world’s most popular browser. The core philosophy behind vertical tabs is to utilize the screen real estate more efficiently, particularly on modern widescreen monitors where horizontal space is abundant but vertical space is at a premium.

The Problem with Horizontal Tabs

For decades, the horizontal tab strip has been the standard. However, as browser usage has intensified, this model has shown its limitations. When a user opens more than a handful of tabs, the browser is forced to shrink the width of each tab until only a small icon or a fragment of the title remains visible. This creates several issues:

• Loss of Context: Users cannot identify tabs at a glance without hovering over them.
• Limited Capacity: A single row can realistically only manage 10 to 15 tabs effectively before usability degrades.
• Wasted Space: On a 1920x1080 or 4K monitor, the vertical screen space is often underutilized, while the horizontal space is cramped.

How Vertical Tabs Solve These Issues

The vertical tabs panel slides out from the left side of the browser window. It lists open tabs in a single column, allowing for full titles to be displayed. This layout supports a much higher volume of open tabs without sacrificing readability. It is particularly beneficial for tab hoarders—users who maintain dozens of tabs for research, work, and leisure simultaneously. By moving tabs to the side, the main content area of the web page remains centered and unobstructed, creating a cleaner visual hierarchy.

Prerequisites for Testing Chrome Vertical Tabs

Before attempting to enable this feature, it is crucial to understand that vertical tabs are currently in an experimental phase. They are not available in the standard version of Chrome that most users download via the Google Chrome website. To access this functionality, you must install a version of Chrome designed for developers.

Choosing the Right Chrome Channel

Google maintains several release channels for Chrome, each serving a different purpose:

1. Stable Channel: The public release, thoroughly tested and polished. Vertical tabs are not here yet.
2. Beta Channel: A preview of the next stable release. Features here are nearly ready but may still have minor bugs.
3. Dev Channel: Updated weekly. This channel is intended for web developers and early adopters. It offers the latest features but is less stable than Beta.
4. Canary Channel: Built and updated daily. This is the bleeding edge of Chrome development. It is the most likely channel to receive experimental flags like vertical tabs first.

For the purpose of this guide, we recommend installing Chrome Canary or Chrome Dev. These can be installed alongside your standard Chrome browser without affecting your existing profiles, bookmarks, or settings.

Installation Steps

To proceed, you will need to download the appropriate installer from the official Google Chrome Dev or Canary pages. Once installed, you should launch the browser. It is advisable to keep your main browsing activity in the Stable Channel and use the Dev or Canary version exclusively to test experimental features. This ensures that any instability does not affect your primary workflow.

Step-by-Step Guide: Enabling Chrome Vertical Tabs Flags

Once you have Chrome Dev or Canary installed, you must manually enable the feature using Chrome’s internal configuration tool, known as Chrome Flags. This tool allows users to toggle features that are still in development.

Accessing Chrome Flags

1. Launch Chrome Canary or Chrome Dev.
2. In the address bar (Omnibox), type the following command exactly: chrome://flags
3. Press Enter. You will be presented with a warning page acknowledging that these settings are experimental. Accept the warning to proceed.

Locating the Vertical Tabs Feature

The Flags page contains hundreds of hidden settings. To find the specific setting for vertical tabs, use the Search flags box located at the top of the page. Typing “vertical” will filter the list. You are looking for the specific experiment labeled “Enable Vertical Tabs” or a variation such as “Tab Search” or “Side Panel” depending on the current build version. As Google updates the browser, the exact naming convention may shift slightly, but “Vertical” is the key term.

Activating the Setting

1. Locate the experiment titled “Vertical Tabs” in the list.
2. Click the dropdown menu on the right side of the experiment. It will likely default to “Default”.
3. Change the setting to “Enabled”.
4. Some experiments may require a specific option to be selected from a secondary dropdown (e.g., “Enabled with title bar” or “Enabled with collapse”).
5. Once enabled, scroll to the bottom of the page and click the blue “Relaunch” button. This is mandatory; the change will not take effect until the browser restarts.

Navigating the New Vertical Tabs Interface

After relaunching Chrome, you will notice a new icon in the top-left corner of the tab strip, near the minimize/maximize buttons. This is the Vertical Tabs toggle. It typically looks like a rectangle with vertical lines or a sidebar icon.

Enabling the Panel

1. Click the Vertical Tabs icon.
2. The sidebar panel will slide out from the left, displaying your open tabs in a vertical list.
3. The original horizontal tabs at the top will disappear or become minimized, depending on the specific implementation in your build.

Managing Your Tabs

Once the vertical panel is active, tab management becomes intuitive and powerful:

• Hover States: Hovering over a tab reveals the page title and close button.
• Drag and Drop: You can drag tabs up and down the list to reorder them, or drag tabs out of the panel to open them in a new window.
• Pinning: Right-clicking a tab offers the option to Pin it. Pinned tabs in the vertical list appear at the top with a distinct icon, remaining static even when the browser restarts.
• Tab Groups: Chrome’s Tab Groups feature works seamlessly with vertical tabs. Groups appear as expandable/collapsible containers within the vertical list, allowing you to categorize tabs by project or topic (e.g., “Work,” “Research,” “Social Media”).

Advanced Customization and Settings

While the experimental flag turns the feature on, there are often additional settings within the standard Chrome UI that allow you to fine-tune the vertical tabs experience.

The Side Panel

Google is moving towards a unified Side Panel architecture in Chrome. Vertical tabs are essentially a specialized view of this side panel. You can often access additional tools here, such as a reading list, bookmarks, or history, without leaving the vertical tabs view. To access the full side panel settings:

1. Look for a “Side Panel” icon in the top-right corner of the browser interface (often located near the profile avatar or extensions).
2. Clicking this allows you to toggle between different side panel views or adjust the width of the vertical tabs panel.

Resizing the Vertical Tabs Panel

The vertical tabs panel is not fixed in width. You can hover your mouse cursor over the right edge of the panel until it turns into a double-sided arrow. Click and drag to adjust the width. This is useful if you have tabs with long titles or if you want to reclaim more horizontal space for the web content.

Visual Density and Appearance

Depending on the specific build version, you may find options to change the visual density of the tabs. This controls the height of each tab row in the vertical list. A denser view allows you to see more tabs at once, while a spacious view improves touch targets and readability.

Why Vertical Tabs are a Game-Changer for Productivity

We believe that vertical tabs are not merely a cosmetic change; they are a fundamental improvement to browser productivity. By analyzing user behavior, we can identify several scenarios where this feature drastically improves efficiency.

Multi-Tasking and Research

Researchers and students often need to cross-reference information across multiple websites. With horizontal tabs, this requires constant scrolling through the tab strip or using keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl+Tab. With vertical tabs, all references are visible in a single scrollable list. This reduces the cognitive load required to switch contexts, allowing for a more fluid workflow.

Developer and Designer Workflows

Web developers and designers frequently keep open tabs for code repositories, documentation, local development environments, and design tools. Vertical tabs allow these resources to be listed side-by-side with the main browser window. Furthermore, developers can resize the vertical panel to accommodate long file paths or repository names without disrupting the layout of the page they are testing.

Marketing and Data Analysis

Digital marketers often analyze dashboards and reports in one window while browsing competitor sites or social media in another. Vertical tabs enable a clean separation of these tasks. By grouping tabs—such as “Analytics,” “Social,” and “Competitors”—marketers can quickly toggle between data sources without losing sight of the main content area.

Troubleshooting Common Issues with Experimental Flags

As with any feature in the Dev or Canary channels, you may encounter bugs or unexpected behavior. Here are common issues and how to address them.

Feature Not Appearing

If you enable the flag but the vertical tabs icon does not appear:

• Ensure you have fully relaunched the browser.
• Check if you are in Full-Screen mode; some UI elements are hidden in this view.
• Verify that you are using a compatible version of Chrome Canary. If the experiment name has changed in a recent update, search for related terms like “Side Panel” or “Tab Strip.”

Panel Overlapping Content

In some early builds, the vertical panel may overlap web content rather than resizing the browser viewport. To fix this, toggle the “Auto-hide” feature if available, or manually adjust the browser window size. Google is actively refining the layout engine to ensure the panel pushes content to the right smoothly.

Performance Impact

Running Chrome Canary with experimental flags can consume more system resources (RAM and CPU). If you notice lag, try disabling other unused flags or restarting the browser. Vertical tabs are generally lightweight, but the underlying engine changes in Canary can be resource-intensive.

Comparison with Other Browsers

While we await the full rollout of Chrome vertical tabs, it is worth comparing Google’s implementation with existing solutions in the ecosystem.

Microsoft Edge

Edge has offered vertical tabs for some time. The implementation is robust, allowing users to move the tabs to the left or right side and collapse them with a hotkey. Chrome’s version is expected to be very similar, as both browsers are built on the Chromium engine. However, Chrome users often prefer the Google ecosystem integration, and native Chrome vertical tabs will likely offer tighter integration with Chrome profiles and sync features.

Brave and Vivaldi

Brave, another Chromium-based browser, has integrated vertical tabs as well. Vivaldi offers the most granular control, allowing for fully customizable layouts including split-screen viewing. Chrome’s approach is expected to be simpler and more streamlined, focusing on the core functionality without overwhelming the user with too many options, which aligns with Google’s design philosophy.

Firefox

Mozilla Firefox has supported vertical tabs for years via extensions like “Tree Style Tab.” While Firefox offers flexibility, it requires third-party add-ons. Chrome’s native implementation is a significant advantage as it ensures stability, security, and a consistent user experience across all devices.

The Future of Tab Management in Chrome

The introduction of vertical tabs is just the beginning. We anticipate that Google will continue to evolve tab management in the coming months. Future updates may include:

AI-Driven Tab Organization

Google has been investing heavily in AI (Bard/Gemini). We expect to see smart grouping features where Chrome automatically categorizes your vertical tabs based on the content of the pages. For example, grouping all shopping tabs together or all video streaming tabs together.

Global Tab Search

A unified search bar for all open tabs, accessible from the vertical panel, would allow users to instantly locate a specific tab among hundreds of open instances.

Cross-Device Sync

Currently, tab management is local to the device. We hope to see vertical tab groups sync across desktop and mobile devices, allowing a user to start a research session on their desktop and continue seamlessly on their mobile device using the same tab structure.

How to Provide Feedback to Google

Since you are testing an experimental feature, your feedback is invaluable to the development team. Google provides a direct channel for reporting bugs and suggesting improvements for Chrome Canary.

1. Report a Bug: If you encounter a glitch, click the Three Dots Menu > Help > Report an issue.
2. Include Details: Be specific. Mention that you are using the “Vertical Tabs” experiment, describe the steps to reproduce the bug, and include screenshots if possible.
3. Community Discussions: You can also check the Chromium Bugs database to see if your issue has already been reported or to contribute additional details.

Conclusion

The arrival of vertical tabs in Chrome marks a pivotal moment for browser usability. While the feature is not yet in the stable release, our guide allows you to access and test it today using Chrome Canary or Dev. By moving beyond the limitations of the horizontal tab strip, users can enjoy a cleaner, more organized, and productive browsing environment.

We at Magisk Modules are committed to providing the latest insights into technology and customization. As the Chrome team continues to refine this feature, we will keep you updated on the best practices for managing your digital workspace. Whether you are a developer, a researcher, or a casual user, mastering vertical tabs now will prepare you for the future of web navigation. Download Chrome Canary, enable the flags, and transform the way you browse the web today.