Safari is finally getting vertical tabs. Apple's first developer betas of iOS 27.3, iPadOS 27.3 and macOS 27.3 add an optional Vertical Tabs view, along with Adaptive Dark Mode for sites that have no dark design of their own and new Siri controls for tabs and browsing history. Apple's own release notes could not be checked directly, so everything here is credited to the reporting of TechRadar, Digital Trends and MacRumors. TechRadar notes that Apple didn't invent the idea: Microsoft Edge has offered vertical tabs for years, and Chrome added them recently.
The important caveat comes first: none of this is on ordinary iPhones, iPads or Macs yet. TechRadar says the features are only in the developer betas for now, and MacRumors reports that the public versions will launch in December after several rounds of beta testing.
How Vertical Tabs work
Vertical Tabs replace the usual tab row with a strip down the left side of the screen. MacRumors says the strip shows icons by default to save space, and that you can widen it to show website titles. TechRadar adds that hovering over an icon gives a quick look at the hidden page, and that tabs can be pinned to the top of the list by dragging and dropping.
The new view is optional, and existing organisation carries across. Digital Trends says it works with Tab Groups and with Topics, the automatic tab categories created by Apple Intelligence. MacRumors says the setting lives in Safari's settings, or in the View menu on Mac and iPad.
The reports differ slightly on phones. TechRadar describes the tabs as living on the left in iPadOS and macOS and, on iOS, on the iPhone Duo, and says they work on iPad and iPhone Duo in both portrait and landscape. MacRumors says the feature is available across iPhone, iPad and Mac, and pairs well with the iPhone Duo's larger display.
What Adaptive Dark Mode changes
The second feature is aimed at the bright white page that appears when the rest of your device is dark. MacRumors reports that if you use Dark Mode and reach a bright site with no dark design, Safari will offer to "Try" Adaptive Dark Mode. Doing so darkens the background, changes text contrast, inverts logos and graphics, recolours vector artwork, lifts raised surfaces and rebalances layered shadows, although not every adjustment is applied to every site.
You can turn it on for all sites or site by site. MacRumors says it won't activate on sites with a native dark mode or an existing dark design. TechRadar says developers will have tags that stop Safari adjusting their pages.
Hardware requirements are less clear here. Digital Trends says the prompt uses Apple Intelligence to darken the page, but calls it murkier whether the feature needs an Apple Intelligence-capable device.
Siri gets a job in the browser
The Siri additions do need that hardware, according to both MacRumors and Digital Trends. MacRumors reports that Siri will be able to sort, move, close and arrange tabs and windows into Tab Groups, and clear history for a particular site over a set period, such as the last 10 days.
A bigger Siri change has not arrived yet. MacRumors says Apple plans to let Siri understand the full content of webpages, including tabs that aren't active, so it could sort several open shopping tabs by price. Apple says that awareness feature is coming, but it isn't in the first beta.
Mia's take: Vertical Tabs is the useful, boring upgrade here, and that's a compliment. If you live with dozens of tabs, it's worth trying when the December release arrives, though smaller iPhone owners should see how much screen it leaves first. Adaptive Dark Mode is the one to test with a little scepticism, because automatically recolouring someone else's website is the kind of job that can go wrong on the odd page. Digital Trends' advice to skip the developer beta on your daily browser is the sensible call: nothing here is worth a wobbly main device a month early.
Reporting notes
