Quick Links
Vertical browser tabs are one of the most popular browser design trends, but not all new things are good. After trying vertical tabs in every browser I could, I’m sticking with horizontal ones.
Vertical Tabs Don’t Play Well With Multiple Monitors
As someone who works with four monitors, I need my browser to have good multiple-monitor support. Browsers like Chrome or Edge work without a hitch here—simply drag the tabs you want to another screen and a new browser window is waiting for you.
However, vertical tabs don’t play well with this scenario. The two best implementations of vertical tabs are Arc and Zen browsers, respectively. Despite that, opening browser windows on multiple screens and managing them can quickly become a major hassle.
If your displays are lined up bezel to bezel, vertical tabs can break the flow of the two web pages you might be toggling between. If you hide the vertical tab bar to preserve this flow, you’ll quickly lose track of your tabs. That’s not ideal, as the entire point of working with multiple displays is to keep tabs on multiple windows.
Tab Organization Can Be Challenging
Organizing vertical tabs can be a bit challenging as well. you may group horizontal tabs and open or collapse them for easier tab management. While you can see more tabs with names when you’re using vertical tabs, the lack of being able to group them means you have yet another list to sort through.
How you like your tabs organized is a matter of personal preference. That said, considering just about everyone using the internet used a browser with horizontal tabs before vertical tabs became mainstream, it’s naturally easier to organize them to your liking.
Browsers like Arc and Zen give you options for pinning tabs on the browser’s sidebar but end up taking a ton of space. This leaves little room on the sidebar for regular tabs and often requires scrolling to look up your tabs.
They End Up Wasting Screen Real Estate
Vertical tabs can waste precious screen real estate, especially if you’re working on 14- or 13-inch devices. This is especially true if you like to have tabs open in a split-screen window, as the vertical tab bar itself might take half a window’s space. Unless you’re willing to collapse your tab bar, you’ll likely end up wasting screen space.
That said, this is yet another area where personal preference matters more than the potential drawback. Some folks might find the height vertical tabs provide a better alternative, especially when reading. However, if you’re like me and often juggle between three or even more tabs open in a split-screen browser window, screen space quickly becomes an issue.
Sites May or May Not Work With Them
Even though you’ll see plenty of websites that do not utilize the width of your screen, they tend not to work very well with vertical tabs. Depending on how your browser renders elements and the vertical tab bar, you might see weird artifacts when using vertical tabs.
There shouldn’t be problems that completely break a particular website, but collapsing and expanding the vertical tab bar over and over again can sometimes mess up websites. You can very easily end up with overlapping menus and icons, especially when using vertically scrolling websites like X or Instagram, as they often tend to have options and links around the viewport’s edges.
It’s nothing that a quick hard refresh can’t fix, but you’ll still end up misclicking or entirely missing a link, button, or control. And if a site doesn’t play ball, you have to switch to horizontal tabs or change the browser entirely.
Horizontal Tabs Are More Convenient for Me
Inmy quest to find the perfect Windows browser, I’ve tried dozens, including Arc, OperaGX, and Zen. There are advantages to using vertical tabs, but horizontal tabs are much more convenient. I find it easier to move tabs around, grouping them is simpler, and they don’t cause problems with any websites.
This is, once again, a personal preference, and you might find vertical tabs easier to deal with. However, considering all the UI elements I frequently interact with within a browser window, horizontal tabs feel easier to deal with. And since they’re always visible in one spot, it’s hard to lose track of a tab unless you’ve got an absurd amount of tabs open.
Regardless, vertical tabs might still work if implemented the right way. Its current implementations in Arc and Zen leave much to be desired, especially if you’re working with multiple displays and on Windows. As many benefits as vertical tabs may offer, I’m sticking to my horizontal tabs for as long as I can.
