I want to say this as someone who genuinely likes Opera: the lack of vertical tabs is one of the main reasons I have considered changing browsers.

Opera has always felt like one of the best browsers in personality, design, and overall user experience. The marketing is strong, the browser feels polished, and features like Tab Islands are some of the best tab-management ideas I have seen. That is why it is frustrating that vertical tabs are still missing.

For people who research, compare information, manage projects, consume content, or keep many tabs open, vertical tabs are not just a cosmetic preference. They change how the browser feels. Horizontal tabs become cramped quickly. You lose titles, context, and overview. With vertical tabs, the browser is easier to scan, organize, and use during long sessions.

This would fit Opera well because Opera already has a strong sidebar design language. A vertical tab system combined with Tab Islands could create one of the best tab-management experiences in any browser. Imagine clean grouping with Tab Islands, readable titles when expanded, icons when collapsed, and even a fully hidden minimal mode where the tab sidebar disappears entirely and comes back when hovering over the edge of the screen.

That hidden mode is something I think Opera could do beautifully. Not just icons sitting on the side, but a vertical tab interface that slides back in only when needed. I have found that style to be one of the best minimalistic browser modes ever. It gives you the full page when you want focus, but your tabs are still instantly available with a simple edge hover.

I understand that implementing this is not free work, but it feels like a high-value feature because it directly affects daily usage. People spend all day inside browsers now. Small improvements to tab management can affect whether users stay with a browser or leave it.

Some users already choose Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Firefox setups, Arc, Zen, and others because vertical tabs make their workflow feel better. Some of those browsers are not as polished as Opera, but they still win users because this workflow matters. Personally, I would rather use Opera than switch to a lower quality browser, but vertical tabs are one of the features that makes me hesitate.

Opera has privacy concerns compared with privacy-focused browsers, and benchmarks are not always where Opera shines. But Opera’s strength is that it feels good to use. Vertical tabs would strengthen one of Opera’s biggest advantages: usability.

Opera has historically been linked with innovation. It used to feel like the browser that introduced ideas others later copied. Now that vertical tabs are becoming more common elsewhere, Opera being absent from that space makes it feel less ambitious than it could be.

Vertical tabs do not need to replace the current tab bar. They should simply be an option. Users who prefer horizontal tabs can keep them. Users who prefer vertical tabs can enable them. Users who want the most minimal setup could use a fully hidden hover-to-reveal mode.

Opera has the design talent to make vertical tabs better than the versions in Chrome, Edge, Brave, Firefox, or newer productivity browsers. If Opera combined vertical tabs with Tab Islands, it could attract power users, researchers, students, developers, professionals, and people leaving browsers like Arc on Windows because they want something more polished and stable.

I really hope Opera reconsiders this and makes vertical tabs an optional feature. Opera is very close to becoming the browser I would want to use permanently. It already has the design, personality, sidebar, Tab Islands, and a workflow that feels better than most browsers. But vertical tabs still feel like one of the main missing pieces.

Even if not everyone wants vertical tabs, the people who do care about them often care a lot. For many of us, they make browsing feel cleaner, more organized, more focused, and much better for research or heavy tab usage.

I also think this makes sense from a business standpoint. The users who benefit most from vertical tabs are often power users, students, researchers, developers, professionals, and people who spend long sessions in their browser every day. Those users are more likely to stay in the browser longer, build habits around it, and become loyal users.

Since Opera benefits from people actively using the browser, keeping more serious long-session users could help Opera commercially too. Vertical tabs could attract users who currently choose Edge, Vivaldi, Arc, Zen, Brave, or Firefox mainly because their tab workflow feels better. Giving those users a reason to switch or stay could be a real advantage.

So this is not only a quality-of-life feature. It could help Opera retain and attract the users who use browsers the most. Please consider adding vertical tabs as an option. Combined with Tab Islands, Opera could offer one of the strongest tab-management systems in any browser.