Microsoft Edge Vertical Tabs

Are you still not using Microsoft Edge vertical tabs? If you regularly find yourself having a lot of tabs open, you might be able to improve your browsing experience with this new Edge feature. Microsoft has introduced vertical tabs in Edge since version 91.0.864.48 so support for vertical tabs might already be available to you (learn how to find out which version of Microsoft Edge you have here).

Other popular browsers like Google Chrome and Firefox offer support for vertical tabs through extensions but before you go running off to install these addons, you might want to experiment with vertical tabs in Edge first and decide whether or not you like the feature.

Vertical tabs might not necessarily be the thing for you but depending on how you use the internet, they could potentially help you get a much better experience.

Allow me to clarify what I mean.

Microsoft Edge Vertical Tabs and the Problem They Solve

I will try to show you the benefit that you can get by using Microsoft Edge vertical tabs. As mentioned above, vertical tabs are especially useful in situations where you have a lot of tabs open simultaneously.

If you're asking yourself at what point vertical tabs become helpful, please remember that I often have A LOT of tabs open simultaneously.

Cases will be different, but for me personally this can be the case when I’m following stocks on the stock market (one of my other interests). 

I’m not making any recommendations here, but one of the services that I personally use is Tradingview. When I’m following the markets, my open browser tabs will sometimes look like this.

As you can see, each of these two tabs shows the stock ticker that I’m watching AND the current stock price. That’s very convenient because it allows me to keep track of several stocks at a glance.

Now whenever I’m trying to keep track of too many stocks at once (plus have other tabs open at the same time), the tabs at the top of my Edge browser window become smaller and smaller. 

To the point where they become too small to contain the stock price information.

And THAT is where Microsoft Edge vertical tabs are helpful to me.

How do you enable vertical tabs in Microsoft Edge?

In order to enable Microsoft Edge vertical tabs, click the tab actions menu icon in the top left corner of the Edge browser window.

Select “Turn on vertical tabs” from the tab actions menu.

That’s it. You now have vertical tabs aligned in a vertical column at the left hand side of your screen.

As you can see in the image below, the vertical arrangement of my tabs now provides enough screen real estate so that more information of the actual tab title is visible.

You can also hover over the column border until your mouse pointer turns into a double pointed arrow and then drag to make your vertical tabs column bigger or smaller. 

You can experiment a little with it until you find the perfect balance so that your tabs have sufficient information on them for you and that the rest of the screen is still big enough for you to work with.

Of course you can always switch back and forth between Microsoft vertical tabs and horizontal tabs.

How to disable Microsoft Edge vertical tabs:

Click the tab actions icon in the top left corner of the Microsoft Edge window.

Select “Turn off vertical tabs”.

That’s how easy it is to switch between vertical and horizontal tabs in Microsoft Edge.

Now of course my example here is a very specific one, where it helps me to be able to see the stock prices of all the stocks that I’m watching at once, but I’m sure there are many more conceivable situations where you could benefit from vertical tabs.

Another example could be if you’re working in your OneDrive online and have several different documents open. As long as your tabs have enough space, they will show (part of)  the title of the document so that you can easily see which tab is what.

But as soon as you start having too many tabs open, the tabs will shrink up to a point where all they will be able to show is the little icon (favicon) of the page.

Maybe you have other specific circumstances where you have too many tabs open at once. It doesn't matter what the reasons are. The point is, with Microsoft Edge vertical tabs, you can potentially solve this problem, so it’s just good to know they exist. What’s more: it’s super easy to switch between vertical tabs and horizontal tabs, so in my opinion it's certainly a trick worth knowing.