Microsoft is changing how Vertical Tabs look in Edge on Windows 11. Windows Latest first reported about the new vertical tabs experiment in Edge Canary a few months back. Today, we noticed that the feature codenamed “Project Jupiter” is now turned on automatically in Edge Canary.
When you choose the vertical tabs layout in Edge, a sidebar appears where all the options and tabs are tucked on the left side. You need to hover over the vertical tabs bar to expand the layout and view the opened tabs. Or you have the choice to pin the Vertical Tabs Layout.
In the new design, the vertical tabs bar has Transient and Switcher mode options, but it’s unclear which one will become.
In Switcher mode, Edge’s vertical tab gets more screen space rather than appearing below the workspaces icon and separate from the browser window. As a result, the profile icon now appears on the right side next to extensions and other icons.
The hover action is still the same, but the inner elements in the bar are different.
You’ll notice that the Tab Actions button is now at the top of the new layout. If you select the Enabled or Switcher option in the flag, clicking the Tab Actions button toggles between the vertical and horizontal tabs.
The Transient mode, however, is somewhat different and appears to be a work in progress.
It takes up less space and usually appears as a smaller floating panel, not full height.
This gives you more room to see the actual web page you’re browsing.
And you can still access the Workspaces:
The colour scheme could have been a little better, but the design changes are still nice. Google should jot down this new development because it hasn’t shown any interest in adding vertical tabs to Chrome, while Edge and Firefox have had it for so long.
No one likes adding a sketchy extension to access trivial features like vertical tabs.
How to enable new vertical tabs design in Edge
Since vertical tabs are part of Project Jupiter, which is in the experimental stages, some of you won’t get it after upgrading to the Canary version.
You must force enable the #edge-project-jupiter flag by opening the edge://flags page and setting the flag to Enabled.
Restart Edge to apply the changes, and you’ll get the new design. You can also try it in Edge Stable, but the Canary version has one interesting “transient” mode.
