How to Enable Vertical Tabs in Chrome 146 (Without Flags)

To enable vertical tabs in Chrome 146: navigate to chrome://flags/#vertical-tabs, set to Enabled, and relaunch Chrome. The tab strip moves to a collapsible side panel. Two steps, no extension needed — but workspaces and search require extensions.

Key takeaways

• Chrome 146 shipped vertical tabs on March 18, but they’re flag-only and don’t turn on automatically.
• Two steps: chrome://flags/#vertical-tabs → Enabled → relaunch → Settings > Appearance > Tab strip position → Left.
• Native version has no workspaces, no session recovery, and no keyboard tab search. Extensions fill those gaps.

You have 30 tabs open and every one of them is a tiny favicon you have to hover to identify. Chrome 146 finally has a fix for this — vertical tabs shipped on March 18, 2026, moving the tab bar to a left sidebar where every tab gets a readable title. The feature Firefox users have had for years through Sidebery is now native in Chrome. Two steps to turn it on, and a few gaps worth knowing before you decide whether the built-in version is enough.

How to Enable Vertical Tabs in Chrome 146

The feature ships hidden. Two steps required:

Step 1 — Enable the flag.

Open a new tab, type chrome://flags/#vertical-tabs in the address bar, and press Enter. You will land directly on the vertical tabs flag. Change the dropdown from Default to Enabled, then click the Relaunch button at the bottom of the page. Chrome restarts.

Step 2 — Switch the tab strip position.

After relaunching, open Settings (three-dot menu → Settings) and go to Appearance. Scroll to Tab strip position and select Left. The horizontal tab bar disappears and a vertical sidebar appears on the left side of the browser.

That’s the complete setup. No extensions, no download — just two configuration changes.

What the Native Vertical Tab Strip Includes

Once enabled, the sidebar behaves like a standard tab manager with good fundamentals:

• Full title + favicon + close button per tab. No more truncated text at 20 characters.
• Resizable. Drag the right edge to narrow the sidebar to icon-only mode or widen it to show longer titles. The two extremes are a thin icon rail and a panel wide enough for most page titles to display fully.
• Tab group colors and names preserved. If you use Chrome’s Tab Groups feature, the group labels and colors carry over into the vertical strip without any reconfiguration.
• Collapsible. A small arrow at the top collapses the entire sidebar to a narrow icon rail. Chrome remembers your preference.
• Tab search button. The top of the sidebar has a search icon that opens Chrome’s built-in tab search — the same tab search that was available before vertical tabs, now surfaced at the top of the sidebar for easier access.
• Cross-platform. The flag and the sidebar work on Windows, macOS, Linux, and ChromeOS.

For someone who has been running 10–20 tabs and wanted a cleaner view, this hits the mark. The titles are actually readable.

What Is Still Missing

Chrome’s native implementation is version one. There is no roadmap-based speculation needed here — the gaps are concrete features that competing solutions already have:

The biggest gap for anyone doing multi-project work is workspaces. Chrome’s sidebar shows all your tabs in one flat (or grouped) list. There is no concept of switching from a “Research” context to a “Client Work” context and having each context hold its own isolated set of tabs. Tab Groups give you colors and labels. They do not isolate.

Session recovery is the second meaningful gap. Chrome’s built-in session restore is all-or-nothing — you cannot recover one set of tabs from two hours ago while keeping everything else you have opened since. Extensions that snapshot every five minutes solve this.

Keyboard navigation is the third. Tab Search in Chrome requires clicking a button. There is no keyboard shortcut equivalent to a command bar where you type a fragment of a page title and jump to it from anywhere.

If the Native Version Is Enough for You

Chrome 146’s vertical tabs handle the display problem well. Tabs are legible. Groups stay organized. The sidebar collapses when you need screen space.

For daily browser use with a single project in view — one work session, one context, a manageable tab count — the built-in sidebar is a reasonable choice. There is nothing to install or maintain.

The native feature also has an advantage extensions can never match: zero performance overhead. No extension process, no background service worker, no additional memory. The sidebar renders as part of Chrome itself.

Where Extensions Still Lead

The native sidebar solves the visual layout problem. It does not solve the workflow problem — switching between multiple project contexts, recovering from accidental tab closures, navigating a large tab set with the keyboard.

SuperchargeNavigation works through Chrome’s side panel API, which is a separate UI surface from the native tab strip. You can run both simultaneously. The native tab strip shows your current tabs in the left sidebar; the SuperchargeNavigation side panel adds workspaces, session snapshots, and the command bar alongside it.

The workflow that the combination enables:

• Switch between named workspaces (Alt+K → type the workspace name) without hunting through a flat list
• Rewind to any workspace state from the past four hours via 50 auto-snapshots taken every five minutes
• Peek at a link in an overlay with Shift+Click before deciding to open a full tab
• Auto-group all tabs by domain (Alt+G) when a workspace has accumulated too many ungrouped tabs
• Deduplicate tabs — if a URL is already open somewhere in any workspace, Chrome redirects instead of creating a duplicate

None of these require disabling the native vertical tabs. They extend it.

The Flag Status Going Forward

Chrome 146 and Chrome 147 both ship vertical tabs as a flag-only feature. As of March 2026, Google has not announced when — or whether — the flag will be graduated to enabled by default.

The working assumption in the Chrome community is that mid-2026 (Chrome 148–150) is likely for default graduation, but this is inference from the typical Chrome flag lifecycle, not an official statement. If you are enabling the flag now, it stays enabled after Chrome updates. You will not need to re-enable it on each update.

Which Setup Fits Your Use Case

If you have 20 or fewer tabs across one active project and want a cleaner sidebar — Chrome 146 native, no extensions needed.

If you manage multiple projects simultaneously and lose tabs or context regularly — add SuperchargeNavigation alongside the native sidebar. The two do not conflict.

If you need session snapshots specifically — because you close tabs accidentally or do research sessions that need rewinding — SuperchargeNavigation’s 50 auto-snapshots are the only local, zero-telemetry option available for Chrome.

If you want the command bar (searching all open tabs by title fragment from a keyboard shortcut) — that is not available natively in any Chrome version. Alt+K is extension territory for now.

The native vertical tabs are a good first release. The practical ceiling for power users is higher than what Chrome ships today.