Safari Vertical Tabs: How to Get a Vertical Tab Layout in Safari on Mac (2026)

By Kshetez Vinayak, founder of SupaSidebar. Last updated November 9, 2026.

TL;DR

Safari is finally getting native vertical tabs. Apple added them in the Safari 27.3 beta on November 3, 2026, and the final release is expected in December. On 27.3, turn them on with View > Tab Layout > Vertical and tabs move to a column on the left. Until then, Safari stays the last major Mac browser without them. Chrome shipped them April 7, 2026, Firefox in version 136 on March 4, 2025, Edge in 2021, and Brave in version 1.52. Safari's Web Extensions API blocks extensions from replacing the tab bar, so no extension fills the gap. On today's Safari the three real options are the built-in Sidebar (View > Show Sidebar), which lists the active Tab Group's tabs vertically but keeps the horizontal bar, the compact-toolbar hack that shrinks tabs to icons, and an external Mac sidebar app like SupaSidebar. Safari's own vertical tabs list only Safari's tabs. For Safari-only users that will be enough from December. Anyone who also uses Chrome, Firefox or Brave, or wants Spaces and saved links next to their tabs, still gets more from SupaSidebar, one Arc-style panel that works on today's Safari and next to 27.3's tab column. The comparison table and decision framework below explain what each option gives you, and sources are linked inline at each claim.

Looking for something specific?

• Want the broader Mac vertical-tabs landscape (all browsers)? -> Vertical Tabs on Mac: Every Option Compared
• Just want a sidebar in Safari (not tabs specifically)? -> Safari Sidebar Extension Guide
• Want the 5-step setup for adding a sidebar to Safari? -> How to Add a Sidebar to Safari (2026 Setup Guide)
• Want the Mac sidebar app category overview? -> Mac Sidebar App (the pillar)

Does Safari Have Vertical Tabs?

Yes, starting with Safari 27.3. Apple lists Vertical Tabs as a new feature in the Safari 27.3 beta release notes of November 3, 2026, and the final release is expected in December, per Six Colors. Every release before it keeps tabs in the horizontal bar, from Safari 18 on macOS 15 Sequoia and Safari 26 on macOS Tahoe to the first releases of Safari 27 on macOS 27 Golden Gate. Safari 27's first big tab change was grouping tabs by topic with Apple Intelligence, which still kept them in the horizontal bar.

That made Safari the last holdout on macOS. Every other major browser already ships native vertical tabs. Edge has had them since 2021, Firefox since version 136 on March 4, 2025, Brave since 1.52 (per Brave's own announcement), and Chrome as of April 7, 2026 (right-click any window > "Show Tabs Vertically"). Safari 27.3 closes that gap for Safari's own tabs.

Before 27.3, what Safari does have is a Sidebar (toggled via View > Show Sidebar or the sidebar icon in the toolbar) that, when set to the Tab Groups view, lists the tabs in the currently selected Tab Group vertically. Per Apple's Safari User Guide, that sidebar is the same panel that holds Bookmarks and Reading List - it is a panel, not a tab-bar replacement.

Three things make Safari's Sidebar fall short of what most users mean by "vertical tabs":

1. The horizontal tab bar stays visible above the page. The sidebar adds a vertical list; it does not replace anything.
2. The sidebar can be toggled off easily and is not designed to stay open all the time. It also shrinks the website content area when open.
3. Tabs only appear inside a Tab Group. Loose tabs that are not assigned to a Tab Group do not show in the sidebar list.

A Reddit user on r/Safari described the gap exactly: "vertical tabs on the left side. (I only wish the side bar had a setting to make it float on the top of the website rather than shrinking the website contents)" - r/Safari thread, Coming back from Arc. The sidebar shows tabs vertically, but it eats space and is not a true persistent vertical tab strip.

The Real Options for Safari Users in 2026

Safari users now have four real options. Safari 27.3's own Vertical Tabs are the new native path, in beta now with the final release expected in December. The built-in Sidebar, the compact-toolbar hack and an external Mac sidebar app work on the Safari you have today.

The last row is technically not a Safari solution - it is the "give up on Safari" path. The first four are the actual Safari options.

Safari 27.3's own Vertical Tabs (beta now, final in December)

Safari 27.3 adds a native vertical tab layout. Apple's Safari 27.3 beta release notes describe it as "a new vertical layout for navigating and managing tabs", released to developers on November 3, 2026, with the final release expected in December (Six Colors). Tabs move to a column on the left side of the window instead of the bar across the top.

How to turn it on once a Mac runs 27.3, per iDownloadBlog's walkthrough.

1. In Safari, open View > Tab Layout and pick Vertical, or go to Safari Settings > Tabs and pick Vertical under Tab Layout.
2. Drag the edge of the tab column to widen it if you want page titles next to the icons.
3. Drag a tab to the top of the column to pin it.

What it does well, per Six Colors. Tabs show as a compact strip of icons by default, hovering an icon shows the page name, pausing on it opens a small page preview, and the layout works with Tab Groups and Safari 27's Apple Intelligence topics.

Where it stops. It is a Safari feature, so it lists Safari's tabs only, and tabs open in Chrome, Firefox or Brave stay in their own windows. With icons only, tabs from the same site look identical until you hover, as iDownloadBlog notes. And until the December release it is in beta, so most Macs still run a Safari without it. Options 1 to 3 below cover today's Safari, and Option 3 is also the way to see every browser's tabs in one panel next to Safari's own column.

Option 1: Safari's built-in Sidebar with Tab Groups

On Safari before 27.3, the fastest path is using what Safari already ships. View > Show Sidebar (or Shift+Cmd+L), then click the Tab Groups icon at the top of the sidebar. Tabs in the active Tab Group appear in a vertical list inside the sidebar panel.

How to set it up so it is as close to "vertical tabs" as Safari allows:

1. Open Safari Settings > Tabs and set the layout to "Compact" (on macOS Tahoe, this layout requires 26.4 or later) - this minimizes the horizontal tab bar.
2. View > Show Sidebar to open the left panel.
3. Click the Tab Groups disclosure arrow at the top of the sidebar to see the tab list.
4. Optional: assign all open tabs to a Tab Group ("Move to Tab Group > New Empty Tab Group") so the sidebar lists them.

The catch: Safari's sidebar was not designed as a persistent tab UI. It shrinks the website content area when open, has no hover-to-close on individual tabs, no count badges, and no drag-to-reorder behavior comparable to Arc. It is functional for 5-15 tabs in a single group. Past that, it falls behind even Firefox's native vertical tabs.

Option 2: The compact-toolbar hack

The closest pure-Safari workaround was documented by Reddit user TheDacripla in r/Safari on macOS 26.5. The steps:

1. Safari Settings > Tabs > set layout to Compact (on macOS Tahoe, this layout requires 26.4 or later).
2. View > Customize Toolbar - remove everything from the toolbar.
3. Add back only the Sidebar button, the Tabs / URL field, and Share.
4. Add flexible spacers to the right side to push everything to the left.

What this gets the user: a minimal toolbar with horizontal tabs shrunk to icon size. After about four tabs, titles disappear and only favicons remain - effectively a horizontal favicon strip, not a vertical list. It is the most "vertical-feeling" pure-Safari setup, but it is still horizontal. It does not solve the underlying problem of finding a specific tab in a large set.

The author themselves notes the limit: "The result is something that is somewhat close, but somewhat redundant because you have your tabs in 2 places."

Option 3: An external Mac sidebar app

Safari's own vertical tabs, in 27.3 and later, list only Safari's tabs, and every Safari release before 27.3 has no vertical layout at all. A separate macOS app covers both cases. SupaSidebar is built for this exact use case. It runs as a menu bar app, opens a sidebar panel docked to either screen edge, and reads Safari's open tabs via AppleScript and the macOS Accessibility API. Dock it on the right edge (⌘⌃L switches sides, per the sidebar docs) and it never crowds Safari 27.3's tab column on the left.

What this adds on top of Safari's own options.

• A persistent vertical panel that stays visible (does not collapse when focus changes)
• Live Tabs across 20+ browsers, not just Safari - tabs from Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Edge, and others appear in the same panel (Live Tabs)
• Spaces (workspaces) for separating work tabs from personal, similar to Arc Spaces
• Pinned items that persist across all Spaces
• A global Command Panel (⌘⌃K) that fuzzy-searches across saved links, recent items, and live browser tabs in one query
• Arc's tab switcher inside Safari. Tap ⌃Tab to jump back to your last tab, or hold ⌃ to pick from your 5 most recent, shown as cards like Arc (Tab Switcher, new in 1.6)
• Back and Forward buttons that step through the tabs you used recently, in Safari and any other browser, with right-click for the full list
• SupaView, a small floating window like Arc's Little Arc. ⌘-click a saved link in the sidebar to read it without leaving the Safari tab you're on. It runs on WebKit, the same engine as Safari

Trade-offs: Safari users granting Accessibility and Automation permissions in System Settings > Privacy & Security is a one-time step. The architecture is different from a browser extension - the Mac Sidebar App pillar covers why the category exists in 2026.

One Safari user's email to support summarized the Safari-user version of this problem: "very excited that it solves a problem I've been trying to solve for a long time" - the long-time problem being wanting "tabs, tab groups, and bookmarks vertically listed simultaneously" in Safari, which Safari's own sidebar cannot do.

Why No Safari Extension Can Add Real Vertical Tabs

Searches for "safari vertical tabs extension" land on a near-empty result page in the Mac App Store. The reason is architectural, not a gap in the developer ecosystem.

Per Apple's Safari Web Extensions documentation, Safari extensions run in an App Sandbox. They can:

• Modify webpage content (read and rewrite HTML/CSS/JS inside a tab)
• Add toolbar buttons and popovers
• Read tab metadata (title, URL) with user permission

They cannot:

• Replace or hide Safari's tab bar
• Inject persistent UI into Safari's browser chrome (outside a webpage)
• Render a sidebar that survives switching tabs (any extension-rendered panel is scoped to the active webpage's iframe)

This is by design. Apple's macOS Human Interface Guidelines treat Safari's UI as part of the OS, not as a surface third parties can rewrite. The same constraint applies to all Safari extensions, not just sidebar ones - which is why Vivaldi-style tab stacking, Arc-style spaces, and tree-style tabs do not exist as Safari extensions either. For a broader look at what Safari extensions actually can do, see Best Safari Extensions.

So vertical tabs in Safari had to come from Apple, and they now have, in the Safari 27.3 beta of November 3, 2026, with the final release expected in December. Beyond Safari's own tab column, the other paths are an external app alongside Safari or a browser whose UI carries vertical tabs natively (Firefox, Edge, Brave, or Chrome, which shipped them to stable on April 7, 2026).

Comparison: Safari Vertical-Tabs Options vs Other Browsers

A Reddit user on r/Safari put one browser-switch trade-off plainly: "I was using zen before but i abandon it due to high ram usage. But i miss its vertical tab very much" - r/Safari, Vertical Tab Setup thread. The Brave path has a similar trade: Brave's vertical tabs work, but as a TabMark 2026 review notes, "it's not optimized for extreme tab hoarding". Switching browsers solves vertical tabs but usually means giving up the reason most people picked Safari (battery, Apple ecosystem, performance on Apple Silicon). From Safari 27.3, switching just for the layout is no longer needed.

Safari-Specific Caveats When Using an External Sidebar App

Safari is more sandboxed than Chrome or Firefox. This produces some real limitations even when using a sidebar app that supports Safari:

• No per-tab audio indicator. Safari does not expose per-tab audio state via AppleScript in the same way Chrome does. Sidebar apps cannot show a "muted" icon next to a specific Safari tab.
• Slight polling delay. SupaSidebar re-reads each running browser's tabs every 0.5 seconds while the sidebar is visible, stretching to 3 seconds for a browser with 100+ open tabs, and every 5 seconds while it is hidden. Safari's AppleScript response can take a beat longer than Chrome's on the same machine, especially under heavy CPU load.
• Permissions required. Accessibility permission (System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility) and Automation permission for Safari (System Settings > Privacy & Security > Automation > SupaSidebar > Safari toggle on) are both needed. Both are reversible at any time.

None of these are dealbreakers for most Safari users, but they are honest limits worth knowing before installing.

Conclusion: Picking what to use

Safari is getting native vertical tabs. They are in the Safari 27.3 beta now, and the final release is expected in December (Six Colors). For Safari-only users that settles the layout question. The rest comes down to what sits around the tabs, and whether more than one browser is in play.

Try SupaSidebar (free tier) if option 3 fits the workflow. For the cross-browser vertical-tabs landscape on Mac (not just Safari), see Vertical Tabs on Mac: Every Option Compared.

Why we recommend SupaSidebar

SupaSidebar is a macOS app that brings Arc's sidebar to every browser - one sidebar for tabs, bookmarks, files, and apps across 32+ browsers including Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Arc, Zen, Vivaldi, Brave, Helium, and Dia. For Safari users specifically, it covers what Safari's own vertical tabs leave out, one persistent panel with tabs grouped by browser, saved links and Spaces, all searchable from a single Command Panel (⌘⌃K) across every browser running on the Mac. It works on today's Safari and next to the new tab column in Safari 27.3.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Safari have vertical tabs?

Yes, from Safari 27.3. Apple added Vertical Tabs in the Safari 27.3 beta on November 3, 2026, and the final release is expected in December. Turn them on with View > Tab Layout > Vertical. Before 27.3, Safari only has a Sidebar panel (View > Show Sidebar) that, when set to the Tab Groups view, lists tabs in the active Tab Group vertically - but the horizontal tab bar stays visible above the page, and the sidebar shrinks the website content area when open.

Can I install a vertical tabs extension on Safari?

No working Safari extension fully replaces the horizontal tab bar with vertical tabs. Apple's Safari Web Extensions API prevents extensions from modifying Safari's browser chrome - they can read tab metadata and modify webpage content, but they cannot hide or replace the tab strip. Safari 27.3 adds its own vertical tabs, so an extension is no longer needed for the layout. For one panel that also shows tabs from other browsers, the path is an external macOS app.

Will Safari ever add vertical tabs natively?

Yes, and it already has in beta. Apple's Safari 27.3 beta release notes of November 3, 2026 list Vertical Tabs as "a new vertical layout for navigating and managing tabs", and the final release is expected in December, per Six Colors. Safari 27 on macOS 27 Golden Gate (released September 14, 2026) shipped with horizontal tabs only and a new Apple Intelligence feature that groups tabs by topic. With 27.3, Safari joins Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Brave, which all ship vertical tabs.

Can Safari switch back to my last tab like Arc's Ctrl Tab?

Not on its own. In Safari, Ctrl Tab moves to the next tab in the tab bar, in order. SupaSidebar's Tab Switcher makes Ctrl Tab jump back to the tab you were just on, and holding Ctrl shows your 5 most recent tabs, including tabs open in Chrome or any other browser. It's new in SupaSidebar 1.6. Turn it on in Preferences > Labs.

How is Safari's Tab Groups sidebar different from vertical tabs?

Safari's Tab Groups sidebar lists tabs vertically inside a panel, but it does not replace the horizontal tab bar - both are visible at the same time. Tab Groups also require explicitly assigning tabs to a group; loose tabs do not appear in the sidebar list. True vertical tabs (Safari 27.3 and later, Firefox 136+, Edge, Brave 1.52+, Chrome since April 7 2026, Arc) replace the horizontal bar entirely with a single vertical list of every open tab.

What about iPad Safari vertical tabs?

Yes, from iPadOS 27.3. The iPadOS 27.3 beta adds the same Vertical Tabs layout as the Mac, turned on from Safari's View menu, with the final release expected in December, per 9to5Mac. Before 27.3, iPad Safari only has a Sidebar panel similar to macOS Safari, with the same limitations - tabs appear vertically only inside Tab Groups, and the horizontal tab bar stays visible. iPad Safari also has no extension capable of adding true vertical tabs, for the same architectural reasons as macOS Safari.

Is the compact-toolbar hack a real vertical-tabs solution?

No. The compact-toolbar hack shrinks Safari's horizontal tabs to favicon-sized icons in a minimal toolbar - it does not produce a vertical list. The author's own description: "somewhat close, but somewhat redundant because you have your tabs in 2 places." Useful for minimalists with few open tabs; not a Firefox-style vertical-tabs replacement.

Does SupaSidebar work in Safari like a Safari extension?

No. SupaSidebar runs as a standalone macOS menu bar app, not a browser extension. It reads Safari's tab data via AppleScript and renders a sidebar panel docked next to the Safari window. The same app works alongside Chrome, Firefox, Arc, Brave, and 20+ other browsers - the Mac Sidebar App pillar explains the category in detail.

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By Kshetez Vinayak, founder of SupaSidebar. Last updated November 9, 2026.