Browser vertical tabs: what the sidebar fixes

If the tab strip at the top of the window has shrunk to a row of favicons, vertical tabs are the quickest fix available, and every major Chromium and Gecko browser on the Mac now has them built in. Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Brave all move the strip to the side of the window with one setting, no extension required. The column gives every tab a readable title and a scrollable list. What it does not do is reduce the number of separate jobs crammed into one window. This guide covers the exact menu path in each browser (checked against each vendor's own help pages in October 2026), what the column really improves, what it costs in screen width, and where the sidebar stops being the right tool.

Where the setting lives in each Mac browser

The feature has the same name everywhere, but the switch sits in a different place in each browser. These are the paths the vendors document today.

Browser	Fastest way on a Mac	Settings path
Chrome	Right-click empty space on the tab strip, choose Show Tabs Vertically	Settings, Appearance, Tab position: Vertical
Firefox	Right-click the toolbar, choose Turn on Vertical Tabs	Settings, General, Browser layout: Vertical tabs
Edge	Click the tab actions arrow at top left, choose Turn on vertical tabs	Shortcut Ctrl+Shift+Comma toggles the layout
Brave	Right-click any tab, choose Use vertical tabs	The same right-click menu turns it off

Chrome documents the most entry points. According to Google's Chrome Help page on tabs, the option appears when right-clicking the tab strip or a single tab, under Settings and Appearance as "Tab position", under the three-dot menu in More Tools, and in the Mac View menu as Show Tabs Vertically. The same page describes a collapsed view where hovering over the narrow column expands a title or a tab group name, and a menu item called Expand Collapsed Tabs by Hovering to turn that behavior on or off.

Firefox places vertical tabs inside its sidebar. The Firefox vertical tabs page says the setting is under Settings, General, Browser layout, and that a right-click on the toolbar also works. Once on, the panel can be expanded to show full titles or collapsed to icons, and the sidebar can be dragged wider or hidden.

Edge describes its toggle on the Microsoft Edge vertical tabs page: the "Search tabs" arrow in the top left corner offers "Turn on (or off) Vertical Tabs", and the layout switches back and forth with Ctrl+Shift+Comma. Microsoft lists the feature as available on current Windows and macOS.

Brave added the feature in May 2023. The Brave announcement says a right-click on an existing tab followed by "use vertical tabs" moves the strip to the left, keeping the right side free for Brave's own Sidebar.

What the column fixes

The horizontal strip divides one fixed width by the number of open tabs. Past a certain count, titles disappear and only icons remain, and two documents from the same service become indistinguishable. A vertical list does not divide anything. Each tab gets the full width of the column, and extra tabs simply extend the list downward, where it scrolls like every other list on the Mac.

Three improvements follow directly from that change.

• Titles stay readable. Two Google Docs tabs show their document names instead of the same blue icon.
• The active tab is easy to find. A highlighted row in a list is easier to spot than a slightly lighter shape in a crowded strip.
• Closing tabs gets faster. Each row has its own close button at a predictable position, so clearing ten stale tabs is a matter of moving straight down the column.

There is also a geometric argument that matters on modern Mac displays. Laptop screens are wide and relatively short. A tab strip and toolbar at the top take vertical space, which is the scarce dimension, while a column at the side takes horizontal space, which is the plentiful one. Most web pages are designed for a reading width far narrower than a 14 or 16 inch display, so a narrow column at the side usually costs nothing a page actually needed.

Tab groups benefit the most. In a horizontal strip a collapsed group is a small colored label that is easy to forget. In a vertical column, five named groups read like a table of contents, and expanding one feels like opening a folder.

What the column costs

The trade-offs are real but small, and they are mostly about habit.

The first is muscle memory. Keyboard shortcuts for next and previous tab still work, but the eye has to learn to look left instead of up. The Brave announcement itself mentions a short adjustment period. Most people settle in within a few days, but anyone who switches between machines with different layouts will feel the friction each time.

The second is width on small windows. On a 13 inch screen with two windows side by side, a fully expanded column can squeeze a page below its comfortable width. This is what the collapsed mode is for: Chrome, Firefox and Edge all let the column shrink to icons and expand on hover or click, so the space is spent only when it is needed.

The third is consistency across browsers. Each vendor places the column on the left by default, but the details differ. Firefox shares the column with bookmarks and history, Brave keeps its feature sidebar on the right, and Edge pairs the tabs with its own side pane. People who use two browsers daily end up learning two slightly different layouts.

None of these costs is a reason to avoid the feature. They are reasons to try it for a full week before judging it, and to use the collapsed view on smaller screens.

Extensions versus built-in vertical tabs

Before vertical tabs were built in, the only route was an extension that drew a tab list in a separate panel or popup. Many of those are still listed in the Chrome Web Store, and some add features the built-in versions lack, such as nested tab trees that show which tab opened which.

For most people the built-in option is now the better default, for three reasons.

1. No second tab strip. Many extensions could not hide the native horizontal strip, so the window showed the same tabs twice. Built-in vertical tabs replace the strip instead of duplicating it.
2. No extra permissions. A tab manager extension typically asks to read browsing history or every open tab. The built-in feature asks for nothing.
3. No dependency on a third party's update schedule. Chrome's move from Manifest V2 to Manifest V3 removed older extensions that were not rebuilt. A built-in setting is maintained with the browser itself.

Extensions still make sense for a narrow set of needs. Tree-style nesting is the most common one. If the goal is simply readable titles and a scrollable list, the setting in the table above is enough, and it is worth removing any older tab extension that duplicates it.

What vertical tabs do not fix

Once the list is readable, a different problem often becomes visible. The column shows clearly that the window contains several unrelated jobs: two email accounts, a team chat, a project tracker, a client's dashboard, and a dozen research pages. Vertical tabs sort that pile into a tidy column. They do not separate it.

Three limits stay in place no matter how the strip is drawn.

Everything in the window is the same signed-in person. A tab row cannot hold a second Gmail account alongside the first unless the browser offers a separate profile or container. Chrome and Edge use profiles, which open in separate windows. Brave added containers in version 1.92 in July 2026. The vertical column itself plays no part in this.

macOS cannot see inside the column. Mission Control, Command+Tab and the Dock all work on apps and windows. A chat tool living in row seven of a browser column is invisible to them. Switching to it means switching to the browser first, then finding the row.

Notifications arrive from the browser, not from the app. When a tab sends a notification, the system shows it as coming from the browser. Which tab, and which account, has to be worked out after the fact.

These limits are not flaws in vertical tabs. They are the boundaries of what a tab list can do. Reorganizing the list more cleverly does not move them.

When a sidebar of apps beats a sidebar of tabs

The pattern that outgrows vertical tabs is easy to recognize. The column has grown long, it is sorted by client or by employer rather than by topic, and some rows are the same service signed in as different people. At that point the boundary being drawn is an identity boundary, and a list of tabs is the wrong container for it.

App aggregation browsers on macOS approach the same sidebar from the other direction. Each row in the column is a web app with its own cookie storage, so two Gmail accounts sit side by side and both stay signed in. The site publishing this guide is run by the maker of one such browser for the Mac. Its Features page describes the details: apps in a left sidebar, Command+1 to 9 to jump to an app by position, Command+K to find an app or open tab by name, and notifications collected in one place. Groups of apps can be split by client or role through Workspaces.

Its Pricing page lists a free plan with 1 workspace and up to 3 apps, and a Pro plan at $7 per month, $60 per year, or $129 as a one-time purchase, with a 14-day trial that needs no account or card. Other tools in the same category set different free limits. The comparison with Wavebox and Shift is laid out on the same pricing page.

The two approaches combine well. A browser with vertical tabs handles open-ended research, where pages come and go. A sidebar of apps handles the handful of services that stay open all day.

A simple test decides which services belong where. Look at the vertical column at the end of a working day and mark every row that was open in the morning and is still open now. Those rows are not browsing. They are tools, and they are the candidates to move. Rows that were opened, read and closed within the day are browsing, and the tab column is the right home for them. In practice the first group is a short list: mail, chat, a calendar, a project tracker, and one or two client systems. Moving only that group usually shortens the tab column enough that it stays readable without any further cleanup.

What to change first

Turn on vertical tabs in the browser already in use, through the right-click menu on the tab strip, and leave everything else alone for a week. If readable titles were the whole problem, that is the fix. If the column is readable but still long, and it is long because several accounts and services share one window, give those services their own rows in a sidebar built for apps, such as SpaceDeck.