Let’s be real. You’re probably reading this with forty tabs open, and half of them are so squished you can’t even see the favicons anymore. It’s a mess. Honestly, the horizontal tab strip at the top of the browser is a relic from a time when we weren't doing 90% of our lives inside a web browser. Google Chrome vertical tabs aren't just a design choice; they're a survival tactic for anyone who lives in their browser.
Most people think Google just "forgot" to add vertical tabs while Microsoft Edge and Brave were out there winning over the productivity nerds. That's not exactly the case. Google has been playing a long game with "Tab Groups" and "Side Panel" integration, trying to find a way to make vertical browsing work without breaking the core simplicity of Chrome. But if you’re looking for that specific sidebar experience, the landscape has changed significantly over the last year.
Why the horizontal strip is failing you
Standard tabs have a fatal flaw: the more you need them, the worse they get. As you open more pages, the width of each tab shrinks until you’re left with a row of anonymous gray slivers. It’s frustrating. You end up clicking through five different sites just to find that one Google Doc you were working on ten minutes ago.
Vertical orientation solves this because height is much more abundant than width on modern 16:9 or 21:9 monitors. By shifting the navigation to the side, you can actually read the page titles. It’s the difference between looking at a stack of unlabeled folders and looking at a well-organized bookshelf.
The Chrome "Side Panel" Reality
Google didn't just copy-paste the Edge sidebar. Instead, they leaned into the Side Panel architecture. If you click the square icon next to your profile picture (or sometimes it's tucked in the three-dot menu depending on your specific build), you’ll find the "Reading List" and "Bookmarks" have been joined by a much more powerful "Search" and "History" interface.
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But wait. There’s a catch.
As of right now, Google hasn't pushed a "one-click" toggle to flip the main tab strip to the side for every single user on the stable branch. They are experimenting with a feature called "Tab Search" (the little downward arrow on the top left) which acts as a vertical list, but it's not a permanent sidebar. To get true, permanent Google Chrome vertical tabs, you often have to look at the Chrome Web Store or use the Tab Groups "Save" feature to manage the clutter.
The Workarounds That Actually Work
If you're desperate for that vertical layout today, you have two main paths. You can go the "Official-ish" route using built-in features, or you can use extensions that honestly do a better job than most native implementations.
The Power of Tab Groups
Google wants you to use Tab Groups. Right-click a tab, add it to a group, and give it a color. It doesn't put them on the side, but it lets you "collapse" them. This is Chrome’s way of saying, "We know you have too many tabs, please hide some." When you collapse a group, you reclaim a massive amount of horizontal space. It’s a halfway house between chaos and organization.
The Side Panel "Search" Hack
Open the Side Panel. Click the dropdown and select "History" or "Reading List." While this isn't a direct tab switcher, it provides a vertical view of your most recent activity. For many, this scratch the itch of needing a vertical list to scan through their work history without losing their place on the main page.
Extensions: The Real Way to Get Google Chrome Vertical Tabs
Because Google is conservative with UI changes, the developer community stepped in. I've tested dozens of these, and most are honestly trash. They’re laggy or they steal your data. But a few stand out as genuine productivity boosters.
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- Side Space: This is probably the closest you’ll get to a native feel. It creates a dedicated area for managing your sessions.
- Vertical Tabs (by various devs): There are several with this name, but the ones that utilize the actual Side Panel API are the best. They don't try to draw a "fake" window; they live inside Chrome's official side area.
- Tree Style Tab (Chrome Version): If you're a Firefox refugee, you know this one. It’s complex. It’s ugly. But it’s incredibly powerful for nesting tabs—showing you which tab you opened from which page.
The reality is that these extensions often perform better because they can prioritize information density in a way Google's "clean" aesthetic won't allow.
What Most People Get Wrong About Browser Performance
"Doesn't having all those tabs open on the side kill my RAM?"
Not anymore. This is a huge misconception.
Google introduced Memory Saver mode recently. It doesn't matter if your tabs are vertical, horizontal, or hidden in a group—if you haven't clicked them in a while, Chrome "freezes" them. The "Memory Saver" tool kicks in and yanks the data out of your RAM, keeping only a tiny thumbnail and the URL active. When you click back, it reloads. This makes the argument against vertical tabs (that they encourage "tab hoarding") largely irrelevant to system performance. Your computer won't explode just because you can now see 50 tab titles at once.
The Ergonomics of the Side
Think about how we read. Left to right, top to bottom. Our eyes are much more accustomed to scanning a vertical list of text than a horizontal one. When you use Google Chrome vertical tabs, you’re aligning your browsing habits with natural human scanning patterns. It reduces cognitive load.
It also changes how you interact with your screen. On a wide monitor, the center of the screen is where the action happens. The far left and right are often "dead zones" of white space on websites. Filling that dead zone with your navigation makes sense. It’s efficient use of digital real estate.
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Is Google Ever Going to Make This Native?
The short answer? They're trying, but they're scared.
Google’s design philosophy is "Don't break the web for Grandma." If they suddenly move the tabs to the side, millions of casual users will be lost. However, within the Chrome Flags (chrome://flags), there are constant experiments involving "Side Panel" enhancements.
We’ve seen "Power Bookmarks" and "Side Search" roll out. The infrastructure is there. It’s highly likely that within the next year, a "Vertical Tab" toggle will appear in the appearance settings, much like how it appeared in Microsoft Edge. They are watching the telemetry. They see people installing extensions. They know the demand is there.
Actionable Steps to Declutter Right Now
Don't wait for a browser update that might be six months away. If your Chrome is a disaster, do this:
- Enable Memory Saver: Go to Settings > Performance. Make sure "Memory Saver" is toggled on. This lets you have 100 tabs open without your laptop fans sounding like a jet engine.
- Try the Tab Search Shortcut: Press
Ctrl+Shift+A(orCmd+Shift+Aon Mac). This opens a vertical, searchable list of every open tab. It’s the "hidden" vertical tab menu you already have. - Use Tab Groups for Projects: Right-click your "Work" tabs and group them. Right-click your "Shopping" tabs and group those. Click the group name to collapse them.
- Experiment with one Side Panel Extension: Go to the Chrome Web Store and search for "Vertical Tabs." Look for one that specifically mentions using the "Side Panel API." It’s much more stable than the older extensions that tried to inject code into every page you visited.
The transition to vertical browsing feels weird for about twenty minutes. After that, looking at a horizontal tab strip feels like trying to read a book where all the sentences are written on a single, mile-long line. Change the orientation, and you’ll probably find that your "tab anxiety" disappears along with those tiny, unreadable icons.