Once enabled, vertical tabs will remain the default setting until the user changes it back.

Image Credits:Google

The company is adding support for vertical tabs alongside a refreshed version of Reading Mode, its distraction-free, text-focused reading experience.

The changes indicate how growing competition from modern-day browsers has influenced Chrome’s development, while also potentially limiting the pull of rivals aiming to differentiate their browsers with features Chrome doesn’t have.

The company notes that the new vertical tabs can be enabled at any time by right-clicking on a Chrome window and selecting “Show Tabs Vertically.” The company says there’s no hard limit on the number of tabs that can be opened (beyond what would be limited already by the user’s hardware). The vertical tabs work just as the horizontal tabs do, meaning you can have different Chrome windows with their own set of tabs or tab groups.

People who prefer vertical tabs tend to be power users or researchers who regularly keep many open tabs in their browser and often have trouble finding the right tabs when things become crowded. This is especially true if you tend to open multiple tabs from the same site, with the same favicon.

This isn’t the first time Google has experimented with putting tabs on the side of the browser. The company tested the feature in a prior decade, but it never made it out of beta. This time around, however, development has progressed, and savvy users have already been able to turn on the option by enabling a flag in recent Chrome builds. Likely, Google’s decision to push forward was influenced by interest in alternative web browsers, like Arc and others from AI makers, which are hoping to convince Chrome users to make a switch.

In recent months, Chrome has been busy rolling out updates, including those that introduced Gemini AI integration, autofill improvements, and a Split View mode, as well as announcing a faster release schedule.

The company says the vertical tabs are rolling out gradually to users in all markets.

Alongside the launch of vertical tabs, Chrome is also rolling out a new Reading Mode experience, which will offer a full-page interface to make it even easier to reduce on-screen clutter to focus on the text.

Image Credits:Google

This will be the new default experience for Chrome users, and arrives at a time when web pages, particularly those on news sites, have become cluttered with ads and prompts to subscribe to newsletters.

Ironically, the problems facing the media industry that necessitated the ad overload are impacted by the fact that Google itself is driving less traffic to publishers as AI takes root.