Brave Browser 1.52 adds vertical tabs support

Brave Software released Brave Browser 1.52 yesterday. The new version of the Chromium-based web browser adds support for vertical tabs.

Vertical tabs allow users of the browser to move the horizontal tab bar to the left side of it. Vertical tabs "help eliminate overcrowding" according to Brave Software's announcement of the feature.

Vertical tabs offer offer some advantages over horizontal tabs, including that they usually display more tabs at the same time and that the visibility of titles is improved. They work well when widescreen monitors are used and not so well if there is limited space available.

Brave Browser's implementation of vertical tabs is disabled by default. Brave users may enable it by loading brave://settings/appearance in the browser's address bar and setting the "use vertical tabs" option to enabled.

All common tab-related tasks and options remain available. You can still use Ctrl-T to open a new tab, or use buttons to do so, and close tabs using the x-icon when hovering over a tab. Pinned tabs are displayed at the top before all tabs that are not pinned, and the right-click context menu displays the same options, including one to toggle the vertical tabs feature.

Two additional options become available when the vertical tabs feature is enabled:

• Show title bar -- determines whether the title bar is displayed or hidden.
• Expand vertical tabs panel on mouseover or when collapsed -- Brave includes the ability to shrink the vertical tabs sidebar to a smaller icon-based sidebar. This feature expands tabs automatically when the mouse is hovered over the area.

The collapsed vertical tab interface looks like this:

Vertical tabs in Brave Browser support groups. Group titles are displayed on top of groups open in the particular browser window.

Tabs can be moved around by using drag & drop operations. One thing that is missing is a hierarchy, similarly to what the Firefox extension Tree Style Tab and others supported for many years. This would display the relationship between tabs in the sidebar.

Brave Browser remembers the user's selection and will start the browser in the selected tab display mode.

Brave 1.52 other changes

Brave Browser version 1.52 includes other changes. While several of them are related to Web3 functionality, mostly associated with crypto-functionality, others improve the browser in other ways.

Brave engineers have restored the option to manage cookies per website. This allows users of the browser to display all cookies set by a particular website and to delete them individually.

Users may load brave://settings/content/all in the address bar to get to the list of sites and their stored cookies directly.

A new feature is the ability to copy text from images on Windows devices. A right-click on an image displays text that Brave identified in a small popup on the screen.

Brave Browser's handling of localhost resources has changed. The browser blocked these outright up until now, unless they were included in a allow-list. The new Localhost connections permission gives users control over these request, so that they may be allowed or blocked individually.

Localhost access is sometimes required for legitimate purposes. The option works for URLs only currently, but Brave plans to add support for resolved IP addresses in a future update.

Brave's download manager has received two changes. The first adds a new "remove from list" option to the context menu of downloaded items, the second displays a new alert icon when downloads use insecure connections.

The entire release notes are available here. Brave Browser updates itself automatically. You can check the installed version on the browser's about page, which you may load brave://settings/help directly.

Brave Software unveiled the browser's Off the Record feature recently, which will launch later this year.

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