How to add Vertical Tab Bars to Opera

Opera is a good alternative to Firefox and Google Chrome. Aside from being one of the fastest browsers, it also has plenty of extensions that enhance it. This guide told you how to add tab sidebars to Google Chrome, and you can also add vertical tab bars to Opera with a few extensions. These are a few of the great tab sidebars for Opera.

The Vertical Tabs Extension

First, head over to this page and press the + Add to Opera button to add Vertical Tabs to the browser. Note that you also need to have the Opera sidebar activated to open the Vertical Tabs bar. So press Ctrl + Shift + S if you can’t find the tab bar on the left of the window as shown in the snapshot below.

Now all your open tabs are also listed on the Vertical Tabs sidebar. Click the page tabs in the vertical tab bar to open them in browser. Click the X beside each tab to close the page. You can press the + button at the top of the sidebar to open new tabs.

In addition, you can right-click the tabs to open the context menu shown in the snapshot below. This includes more options than the context menus on the standard tab bar. For example, you can select a Bookmarks option there to add the page to a Vertical Tabs folder on Opera’s bookmark’s bar.

Vertical Tabs has some handy extra options that the standard tab bar really should include. For instance, you can search your tabs by pressing the Search tabs button at the top of the sidebar. In addition, there’s a Sort tabs button on that organizes the tab titles from A – Z when you press it.

Vertical Tabs also includes grouping options that enable you to set up tab groups. Click the New group option at the top left of the sidebar (just under Show/Hide groups button). That adds a color group box to the sidebar that you can drag tabs into. You can remove any group by selecting and clicking the Remove current group option.

Click the spanner icon at the top of the sidebar and press the Vertical tabs settings button to open the options directly below. There you can select a new theme by clicking the Theme drop-down menu at the bottom. You can also customize the main toolbar and tools toolbar by dragging and dropping the buttons on the Vertical Tabs settings page. Press Apply to confirm the selected settings.

The Tab Sidebar Extension

Tab Sidebar is an alternative to Vertical Tabs you can add to Opera from this page. You can now switch to Tab Sidebar by pressing its button on Opera’s sidebar. That will open the tab sidebar in the shot directly below.

This sidebar is fairly similar to Vertical Tabs, and it also includes the tab grouping options. Press the New tab group button at the top to open a text box. Enter a group title in the text box, choose a color for it by clicking the color palette box and click + Create group to add it the column on the left of the sidebar as shown below. Then you can drag and drop the page tabs into the group boxes.

Tab Sidebar includes a search box at the top. This is always handy if you’ve got loads of tabs open. Then you can type in the website title to find matching pages and filter out the other tabs.

At the top of the sidebar there’s also a Sort option. Click that to open the small menu below. That includes options to further organize the tab list. For example, you can select Title ascending to organize the tabs from A – Z.

The best thing about this tab sidebar is its View option. Click the View button at the top to open a menu with extra tab view options. For example, you can select Compact thumbnail view to add page thumbnail previews to the tabs.

If you close lots of tabs, you can quickly reopen them by pressing the Recently closed tabs button. That shows you a list of pages you’ve closed, and you can reopen them by clicking them there.

Tab Sidebar also has some good customization options, and you can add backgrounds to it. Right-click the Tab Sidebar button and select Options to open its settings page. Then select the Use background option and press the Choose File button to select wallpaper for the tab sidebar as shown below.

The V7 Tabs sidebar extension

V7 Tabs is another handy vertical tab sidebar for Opera, which you can add to the browser from here. Then you can click the V7 Tabs button on the Opera sidebar to open it as shown below. It doesn’t have as many options and settings as Vertical Tabs or Tab Sidebar, but you can save tab sessions with this extension.

To save a tab session, you can press the save session button at the top of the sidebar. Then click Menu > Bookmarks to open a menu that includes your saved tab sessions. Right-click a session there and select Open all to open all the tabs from the saved session. So that’s an alternative way to bookmark website pages.

Another good thing about this tab sidebar is that it can include tabs open in all Opera windows. If you have multiple Opera windows open, click the single or multiple windows button at the top of the sidebar. Then the sidebar will include the tabs open in all the windows.

Right-click the V7 Tabs button and select Options to open extra settings for the extension as below. There you can select a switch tab with mouse wheel over list option. With that option selected, you can cycle through your open pages by rolling the middle mouse wheel.

The settings page also includes a zoom bar. Drag that bar right to expand the tabs. Alternatively, you can drag it left to reduce the tabs on the sidebar.

Vertical tab bars are undoubtedly a terrific addition to Opera. They can fit lots more page tabs on them without any resizing or scaling. Plus these sidebar extensions have handy tab management options such as search boxes, grouping and sort options. The vertical tab bars also integrate neatly with Opera’s sidebar so you can switch between them.