Overview
- Google began a desktop rollout Tuesday, adding vertical tabs and a distraction‑free, full‑page reading view to Chrome.
- Users enable vertical tabs by right‑clicking a window and choosing “Show Tabs Vertically,” which shifts tabs into a left sidebar with readable titles and easier tab groups.
- The sidebar can collapse to icons, behaves like the old tab strip across multiple windows, and has no fixed tab limit beyond your device’s hardware.
- Reading mode now opens as a full‑page, text‑focused view that you can launch from a right‑click or the address bar, with read‑aloud and simple view controls.
- The update is arriving gradually on Windows, macOS, Linux, and ChromeOS, following years of tests and rising competition from Arc, Edge, Firefox, and Vivaldi.