How to Enable and Use Vertical Tabs in Microsoft Edge to Manage Open Websites

Modern widescreen monitors—including standard 16:9 laptops, 21:9 ultrawide desktop panels, and dual-display workstation setups—offer vast amounts of horizontal desktop space. Yet traditional web browsers continue to cram dozens of open tabs into a narrow horizontal strip along the very top edge of the window. As you open more than ten or fifteen pages, tab titles shrink into unreadable micro-icons, forcing you to guess which tab contains your document, meeting link, or research paper.

Microsoft Edge solves tab clutter natively with its celebrated Vertical Tabs interface. By relocating your tabs into a collapsible vertical column pinned along the left margin of your browser, Edge displays full website titles, favicons, and unread badges regardless of how many pages you have open. This tutorial walks through enabling Vertical Tabs, collapsing the sidebar, and grouping pages.

Why Vertical Tabs Outperform the Classic Horizontal Strip

Repositioning your tabs to the side provides significant practical advantages:

• Full Page Title Legibility: Even with 40 tabs open, you can read the complete title of every webpage without hovering your mouse over individual thumbnails.
• Optimal Use of Widescreen Aspect Ratios: Most modern websites are designed with central column reading margins, leaving empty space along the sides. Vertical tabs occupy this spare horizontal width rather than wasting valuable vertical screen height.
• Collapsible Minimalist Pane: With one click, the sidebar collapses into a slender column of favicons, automatically expanding when you hover your cursor over it.

Enabling Vertical Tabs in Microsoft Edge

Activating the vertical layout takes a single click from your browser window:

1. Open Microsoft Edge on your PC or Mac.
2. Look at the very top-left corner of the browser window, just above the address bar.
3. Click the Tab actions menu icon (represented by an icon with a miniature sidebar and tab glyph).
4. Click Turn on vertical tabs.

The horizontal tab bar will immediately disappear from the top, and your active tabs will align neatly in a vertical column down the left side.

Collapsing and Expanding the Vertical Tab Pane

To preserve maximum web reading space while keeping tabs accessible:

1. At the top of the vertical tab column, click the small Left arrow (<) icon labelled Collapse pane.
2. The sidebar shrinks into a compact strip showing only website favicons.
3. To review full tab names temporarily: Simply glide your mouse cursor over the favicon column. The pane will smoothly glide open over the webpage, allow you to find and click your target tab, and auto-collapse the moment your cursor moves away.
4. To lock the sidebar open permanently: Hover over the pane and click the Pin (Thumbtack) icon in the top right corner.

Organising Tabs into Colour-Coded Tab Groups

Vertical tabs become even more powerful when combined with native Tab Groups:

1. Hold Ctrl (or Command on macOS) and click multiple related tabs in the vertical column.
2. Right-click any selected tab and choose Add tabs to new group.
3. Assign a clear name (e.g. Financial Reports or Travel Booking) and pick an accent colour swatch.
4. Click the group header to collapse all nested tabs into a single line, instantly cleaning up your workspace.

Returning to Classic Horizontal Tabs

If you ever wish to return to the traditional top tab bar:

1. Click the Tab actions menu icon in the top-left corner of the vertical tab header.
2. Select Turn off vertical tabs.
3. Your tabs will smoothly slide back across the top of your window.