Opera One browser just pushed an update adding a Vertical Tabs option that moves the tab bar from the top of the window to a resizable panel down the left-hand side.
The feature aims to solve the perennial horizontal tab problem where too many open tabs makes each one shrink to an unreadable sliver of the webpage's favicon.
By contrast, in the vertical layout, page titles always stay legible. Opera's existing Tab Islands feature – where tabs that came from the same page or browsing session are grouped into a collapsible section in the tab strip – carries over from the standard view, and the panel collapses when screen space is tight.
Opera has also built Google Lens directly into the start page search bar with this update, so now an image search can be started by uploading a file, dragging and dropping, pasting from the clipboard, or entering a URL. Both features are live now in Opera One.
Opera is a late arrival to the vertical phenomenon that has slowly been making inroads across the wider browser landscape. Microsoft made vertical tabs generally available in Edge back in May 2021, and the feature has been popular with users on both Windows and macOS.
Mozilla followed in March 2025 with Firefox 136, which introduced vertical tabs as part of a redesigned sidebar. Firefox also allows the strip to be moved to the right edge of the window, if that's your preferred style.
Google was the last of the big names to make the same move. Chrome began rolling out vertical tabs in April, making full page titles readable and tab groups easier to manage, even at double-digit tab counts.
Apple's Safari browser features Tab Groups, which can be navigated from the sidebar and do give a vertical list of sorts, but there's never been a dedicated vertical tabs mode. Do Safari users want one, or are Tab Groups enough? Let us know in the comments.
