Update your Edge Chromium browser today, and you’ll receive a fun little prompt asking if you want to enable the browser’s new vertical tabs feature. As someone who always likes to try new things, I decided to accept my browser’s suggestion.
This, of course, gave me a pretty monstrous list of tabs on the left side of my browser. (Yes I do i really need declutter—This is just a small snippet of the list that fills the entire vertical space of my 1440p screen.)
You’ll notice that all my Reddit links were combined. This is intentional: I’ve been looking for ways to make the vertical tab bar a little more manageable—since it now looks more like a scheme than a wasteland on top of my browser and I stumbled upon some tricksBe aware if you are driving the test the new interface.
G / O Media may receive a commission
Before you begin, know that the default look of the sidebar does not have to be permanent. Click on the small one “<" arrow at the top right of the tab bar up to collapse all in a series of icons. Hover your mouse over it and the tabs will widen. I confess that I don’t find this setting more useful for productivity, but at least it makes my browser look very clean.
As for organizational hacks, I recommend going in edge: // flags in the browser address bar and activate three different flags:
- # border tab groups: Allows users to organize tabs into visually different groups, for example, to separate tabs associated with different tasks.
- # edge-tab-groups-create-auto: Automatically create groups for users, if tab groups are enabled.
- # edge-tab-groups-collapse: Allows a foldable and expandable tab group, if tab groups are enabled.
This will do nothing for the tabs you already have open, but it will will place the new tabs you create from the same domain in a handy group of tabs that you can shrink and expand at will. While you can still soak the tab bar, at least grouping the tabs will help you manage it a little better.
Another approach you can take (either by replacing or in addition to the “groups” feature) is to use an extension organize your list of open tabs. I like Tab organizer, which automatically sorts all tabs by URL. The extension will automatically sort your tabs whenever you press a keyboard shortcut, but I find it more useful set it to sort automatically tabs for time intervals. Out of sight out of mind.
Finally, there are two more browser flags you can do enable for fun, not because they help keep tabs organized. Lift up edge: // flags / reactivate:
- # tab-hover-cards: Activates a pop-up that contains tab information when you hover over a tab. This will replace the tab descriptions.
- # tab-hover-card-images: Displays a preview image on the tab scroll cards, if the tab scroll cards are enabled.
Now, when you float with the mouse over any of the vertical bar tabs, you’ll get a lovely one Pop-up window that gives you the full title of the site and a preview of the image:
That said, I’m still waiting for the biggest change of all: a way to resize the vertical tab bar so I can see a little more of a site’s name. by default. That it was possible when Microsoft was testing the beta version feature of Edge Chromium, so I hope to come back at some point.