I Want Vertical Tabs and Split View by Default

Around the beginning of 2023 there was news that Edge would support GPT via BingAI, and since then I switched from Chrome to Edge.

At that point I found Edge’s vertical tab display and split-screen features convenient and kept using them, but lately free generative AI other than BingAI — Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and so on — has become widespread, and BingAI’s advantage in particular has faded.

So this seems like a good moment to try out other browsers again and think about which browser to use going forward.

Conclusion

• I decided to keep using Edge, based on how easy its vertical tab groups are to use and on stability
• Vivaldi came across as the runner-up

What I Personally Want from a Browser

1. Chromium-based
   1. This is a must, because I want to use extensions available on Chromium such as Vimium
2. Vertical tabs and tab split view supported out of the box
   1. Chrome has vertical tab extensions, but considering stability and tab syncing, I want it supported natively
3. A vendor I can trust
   1. This is a hard one, but a browser is used for a long time and handles sensitive information, so I want a certain level of name recognition and track record
4. Good usability on both Windows and Mac
   1. I use both operating systems, so a case where it’s good on Mac only but awkward on Windows isn’t really acceptable

Browsers I Newly Compared

Arc

• Version tested: 1.8.0
• OS: Windows 11

Good points

1. Vertical bar by default, which I personally appreciate
2. The UI, including the colors, is stylish and exciting
3. Split view works naturally, and being able to split and detach by drag & drop felt fresh
4. You can switch spaces with alt + 1, 2, 3 to switch workspaces

Things I’d like improved

1. There’s no notion of bookmarks, so you can’t do things like shift-select tabs in a folder and delete them all at once
2. Maybe because it’s the Windows version, when searching with ctrl + l, space-separated terms don’t work, and when you pick a candidate what you were looking for doesn’t show up, or the display is slow
3. Occasionally the space icon disappears, making it hard to tell which space you’re in
4. Because things are divided by space, moving across spaces often means hunting for a tab with ctrl + l. But issue 2 makes tab search awkward

An example of issue 2. Pressing enter here searches for 「東京」.

An example of issue 3. This is fixed by restarting the browser, but it seems to happen every time after sleep.

Vivaldi

• Version tested: 6.8
• OS: Windows 11

Good points

1. It has a tab stack feature
2. It has keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures, which look good once you master them

Things I’d like improved

1. The tab stack feature is displayed by splitting the tab bar, so the display area gets smaller and the tab stack names become hard to read