Overview
- Users in the latest Chrome Canary can enable the sidebar by right‑clicking the tab strip and selecting "Show tabs on side."
- The current implementation includes tab search, grouping, new‑tab creation, switching between vertical and horizontal layouts, and a collapsible sidebar.
- Moving tabs to a left sidebar frees horizontal screen space and makes large tab sets easier to scan and navigate.
- A native option reduces reliance on third‑party extensions that have been inconsistent for vertical‑tab functionality.
- Vertical tabs bring Chrome closer to competitors like Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, Firefox, and Brave, though wider rollout plans remain unspecified.