Opera is making a surprisingly quick change to its new Vertical Tabs feature, and it amounts to a fairly blunt admission: the company thinks it got the original design wrong.

Just two months after introducing Vertical Tabs in Opera One, Opera is flipping the layout “upside down.” The New Tab button is moving from the bottom of the vertical tab strip to the top, while newly opened tabs will now appear at the top as well.

The change is rolling out starting September 10, 2026, and Opera says it comes directly from feedback gathered from people using Vertical Tabs. The company originally followed the conventional vertical-tab layout used by other browsers, but says user feedback quickly showed that familiar did not necessarily mean efficient.

Opera moves the new tab button to the top

When Opera introduced Vertical Tabs in July, the browser placed the New Tab button at the bottom of the vertical tab strip. That approach mirrored the way vertical tabs work in other major browsers.

The problem becomes obvious once the tab strip fills up.

With the traditional horizontal tab layout, the New Tab button sits close to the address bar at the top of the browser. With vertical tabs, however, the button could remain fixed at the bottom of the browser window while the address bar and most other frequently used controls stayed at the top.

On a 1080p display, Opera says that it can put the New Tab button roughly 950 pixels away from the address bar. At 2560×1440, the distance can reach around 1,300 pixels, while an unscaled native 4K display can push it beyond 2,000 pixels.

That means users who prefer clicking the New Tab button rather than using a keyboard shortcut repeatedly have to move the cursor down the screen and then back up again.

Opera’s survey of 4,900 Opera One desktop users with Vertical Tabs enabled found that more than 73% said they open new tabs by clicking the button rather than using a keyboard shortcut or another method. The survey was conducted during August and September 2026.

Moving the button to the top is intended to eliminate that unnecessary trip.

New tabs will appear at the top too

Opera is changing more than the position of the button.

Newly opened tabs will now appear at the top of the vertical tab strip, directly below the New Tab button. That keeps the action and its result together instead of placing the newly created tab at the opposite end of the list.

There is one notable exception: Tab Islands.

Opera says it is leaving Tab Islands out of the inversion because changing their direction could cause an entire Tab Island to expand upward. The company decided that would be a much more disruptive change than simply reversing the main tab order.

Users who prefer the original layout aren’t being forced to relearn it, either. Opera says the previous arrangement remains available through the browser’s Easy Setup menu.

Opera admits it got vertical tabs wrong

The most interesting part of the update may be Opera’s explanation for why it changed direction so quickly.

According to Mohamed Salah, Senior Director of Product at Opera, the company initially chose the familiar vertical-tab layout because it wanted switching from another browser to feel natural. After several weeks of feedback, however, Opera concluded that the familiar design wasn’t necessarily the better one.

Salah characterized the original decision as a mistake and argued that it made more sense to correct it after two months rather than allow an inefficient design to become entrenched.

That timing matters. Opera acknowledges that changing an interface can disrupt muscle memory, but says users have only had Vertical Tabs for a short time. The company believes this is early enough to make a significant change without forcing users to undo years of established habits.

Opera is adding several other vertical tab improvements

The redesigned tab strip also gets several smaller quality-of-life changes.

The active tab now has higher contrast, making it easier to identify, particularly when Tab Islands are being used. Opera has also added a + button that appears when hovering over a Tab Island, providing another way to add a tab to the group.

The company has also addressed closing tabs in collapsed mode. Opera says the new behavior makes tabs easier to close while reducing the chance of accidentally closing one.

Another change lets users drag one tab onto another to create a new Tab Island, making manually organizing tabs more straightforward.

The changes are included in Opera Stable version 135.0.5973.123, which also contains other fixes and improvements. Opera’s desktop changelog confirms that the release adds a preference for controlling where new tabs open in Vertical Tabs and makes that preference available through both Settings and Easy Setup.

Opera’s quick reversal is unusual, but it also highlights one of the advantages of a relatively new browser feature: the company can respond to user feedback before a particular interaction becomes deeply ingrained. In this case, Opera decided that putting the most frequently used tab control at the opposite end of a tall screen simply wasn’t worth preserving for the sake of familiarity.

For anyone already using Vertical Tabs in Opera One, the change should be immediately noticeable. And if the new arrangement isn’t your thing, Opera is keeping the original layout available as an option.