Earlier this year, I switched from Google Chrome and Safari to Arc. I made the latter my primary browser across my macOS and Windows machines for its superb cross-platform sync and its excellent tab organization. The experience was nearly perfect — until mainstream browsers caught up. Google finally added vertical tabs to Chrome, an organization feature I absolutely can’t live without. Horizontal tabs work great for a handful of tabs, but arranging them in a neat vertical list is ideal for when the tabs start piling up.
Chrome still isn’t better than Arc in every way, but it doesn’t have to be. Arc is no longer receiving active security patches or new feature updates. The company behind Arc wants you to upgrade to Dia, an AI browser. If you aren’t ready to take that leap, for privacy or functionality reasons, Arc has a limited shelf life. You’ll need to find a replacement eventually. In my case, my next browser might be the one I left behind for Arc in the first place.
I can’t live without vertical tabs, and Chrome finally added them
Vertical tabs let me see all my tabs, even when there are tens or hundreds of them
Historically, mainstream browsers housed tabs horizontally along the top of the toolbar, right under the address bar. Microsoft Edge was a notable exception, as it supports vertical tabs on macOS and Windows, and has for years. It’s not hard to see what makes horizontal tabs appealing. Rather than waste horizontal space on a sidebar where your tabs live, they fit nice and compact inside a row in the toolbar. It’s a good balance of accessibility and space, until you fill up a browser window with a lot of tabs.
Horizontal tabs often show tiny previews of the site logo and webpage name, but that’s only if there’s enough space. As the toolbar fills up with tabs, each tab’s preview shrinks. Eventually, you’re looking at an assortment of random icons, unsure of which tab is which. There are niche settings that enable horizontal tab scrolling, such as the #scrollable-tabstrip and #scrollable-tabstrip-buttons flags in Google Chrome.
However, most users never turn on tab scrolling, and it’s hardly a perfect solution — you can still only fit a limited number of tabs in the toolbar row at once. Vertical tabs move the list of tabs opened in a particular browser window into a sidebar. With a vertical list, you lose some horizontal space for your webpages, but you’re able to see the site name and icon for every opened tab. As the list grows, you can scroll through the vertical tabs from top to bottom by default, without enabling any experimental flags or changing custom settings.
Chrome now supports vertical tabs, but they’re not enabled by default. macOS users should open the View tab in the menu bar and click Show tabs vertically to switch the arrangement. All Chrome users on macOS, Windows, and ChromeOS can enable vertical tabs by right-clicking any open window and selecting Show tabs vertically. It’s that easy. Chrome will shift the tabs to the sidebar, showing icons, full page names, and organizing the tabs by group.
The bigger the screen, the better vertical tabs are. The screen real estate compromise that comes with a vertical tab sidebar might not make sense for small laptop screens. That said, you can collapse the sidebar with Shift + Command + L or Shift + Control + L, depending on your OS. Oddly enough, you can’t set the sidebar to automatically show and hide itself, which is an unfortunate limitation. Setting that oversight aside — it can be solved with third-party extensions — this is exactly the vertical tab integration I always wanted in Chrome.
Arc does vertical tabs better, but not by enough
Chrome is still the best supported browser for web apps and sites
I fell in love with Arc for productivity, and the vertical tabs weren’t the only reason. The browser’s organizational tools, including Spaces and Folders, are helpful for streamlining workflows. Chrome’s tab groups work similarly, but it’s not a perfect match. Arc lets you pin essential tabs to the sidebar, ensuring they always stay open. There’s a separate section for temporary tabs, which can all be cleared in an instant while your pinned tabs remain intact.
That’s not the only perk of Arc’s pinned tabs. They work like a hybrid of web apps and bookmarks, with your Arc browser remembering the specific URL on a site that you pinned. Click around on that site and select a link, and it’ll open as a preview rather than replace your pinned webpage. You can hit a back button on the tab’s name in the sidebar to immediately return to that precise pinned URL. This is really for sites that you use for research, as you can open links or press buttons as you please without losing your place.
These link previews, known as “peeks,” are arguably my favorite part about Arc. The way they work with pinned tabs is super intuitive, and it stretches far beyond simple tab group functionality in other browsers. From a preview, you can close the peek, open it in a split-screen view, or move it to a new tab. For people who spend their entire day working in a browser, features like Arc can seriously speed up processes.
Chrome doesn’t have all these features, and its vertical tabs mode does leave me wanting more — but there are key reasons why Arc can’t stay my browser forever.
Arc’s support is dwindling, and I won’t try Dia
Rather than try another indie browser with vertical tabs, I’m going back to Chrome
Earlier this year, I bullishly proclaimed that I didn’t care that Arc was discontinued. Fast-forward to today, and I’m ready to start walking that statement back. The browser still works, and it continues to receive Chromium updates. Arc uses the same browser engine that makes Chrome and Edge tick, so it remains reliable. But it’s not receiving active security patches or new feature updates, and that’s a problem. Arc’s own website says that for “active security patches and enterprise-grade protection, download Dia instead.”
Dia is Arc’s successor, and it’s an AI browser that does share many similarities with its predecessor. I’m not interested in Dia, though, because I don’t need a bunch of AI features in my browser. That leaves me with two options: keep using Arc until the wheels fall off, or switch browsers again. I’m inclined to pick the latter, because if I wait until there’s a security vulnerability that isn’t patched, it’ll be too late.
Additionally, Arc Search — the mobile Arc browser for iOS and Android — isn’t as polished as the desktop versions. I prefer using Chrome on my iPhone and Android phones, and if I switch back to Chrome on the desktop, I’ll have a truly cross-platform solution. Vertical tabs in Chrome brought my favorite productivity feature to Google’s browser, and it’s winning me back.
-
- OS
-
macOS, Windows, Android, iOS
- Developer
-
The Browser Company
- Cost
-
Free
Arc is a productivity-focused browser available across macOS, Windows, Android, and iOS. It features vertical tabs with excellent organization tools and cross-platform sync. There are handy tricks like link peeking and pinned tabs that save you time. Plus, it’s free.
-
- OS
-
Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS/iPadOS, ChromeOS
- Developer
-
Google LLC
- Price model
-
Free
Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google LLC, built for speed, security, and integration with Google services. It uses the Blink rendering engine (formerly WebKit) and supports extensions, tab sandboxing, synchronization across devices, and frequent updates.
