Microsoft Edge: option to hide the titlebar in vertical tabs mode

[harlan4096]

Microsoft introduced an option in the company's Edge browser recently that allows users to display tabs open in the browser in a sidebar instead of the horizontal tab strip.

The feature is not new, Vivaldi, another Chromium-based browser has supported it for some time, and other browsers, including Firefox, support it as well or have extensions that add the feature to the browser.

The current implementation in Microsoft Edge offers basic functionality only. Users may click on an icon in the browser's toolbar to switch between vertical and horizontal tab display modes.

The sidebar cannot be resized currently, but Microsoft will deal with that soon by enabling resizing options. Another issue weights heavier: the vertical tabs mode does not free up any space in the UI. The tab strip is removed, but Microsoft displays a titlebar by default instead that takes up its place.

That issue is going to be dealt with as well soon, as Microsoft introduced an option in Edge Canary to hide the titlebar when the vertical tabs mode is enabled.

A bit of UI is still displayed by Edge on top of the address bar unless it is displayed in fullscreen.

Microsoft Edge Canary users may enable it already:

1. Load edge://flags/#edge-vertical-tabs-hide-titlebar in the Microsoft Edge address bar.
   
2. Set the experimental flag to Enabled.
   
3. Restart Microsoft Edge.
   

The titlebar is hidden when the flag is enabled. You may undo the change by setting it to Default or Disabled instead.

The change frees up quite a bit of height for the display of sites in the Microsoft Edge browser.

The feature will land in Edge Dev, Beta and Stable builds eventually. It is unknown at this point if the option to hide the titlebar in vertical tabs mode will be added to the Edge settings. It seems likely, as it improves customization options further and makes the sidebar mode more useful to users who want to hide as much browser chrome as possible.

Now You: do you prefer vertical or horizontal tab bars?
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