Chrome’s Hidden Vertical Tabs Just Became Easier to Switch On

Google is adding a dedicated setting inside Chrome’s Appearance page for the Vertical Tabs feature that is still in development. This option aims to make it easier for users to switch between the standard top tab layout and the side tab layout.

We recently reported a hands-on look at Chrome’s upcoming Vertical Tabs feature, which is still being tested. At that time, Chrome allowed layout changes from the tab strip using “Show tabs to the side”, and return to the default layout using “Show tabs at the top” from the context menu.

Chrome now includes a setting called “Tab strip position” inside Appearance settings, which lets users choose whether the tab strip appears at the top or on the side.

The Tab Strip Position setting appears inside Settings > Appearance, under the “Show bookmarks bar” option. Users can choose “Top” or “Side” from the dropdown. Chrome switches to the selected layout instantly, as shown in the video.

This setting also lets users set a preferred layout as the default. For example, users who want to use Vertical Tabs for all browsing sessions can enable it here and return to the classic horizontal layout at any time. The active tab in vertical layout displays a red close icon, which does not appear in the standard horizontal view.

The video below shows how Chrome switches layouts after selection.

Vertical Tabs is still in progress. This setting follows the same path and does not appear by default in Canary.

Apart from the Vertical Tabs setting, Chrome tests Nano Banana image generation and now lets users pin tabs on Android, similar to desktop.