Arc’s sidebar and Control-Tab shortcut make it easy to move between tabs. If you’re considering Safari as Arc approaches its December 22, 2026 shutdown, you can bring both parts of that workflow with you: Safari 27.3 is introducing vertical tabs, and TabBack adds a recent-tab switcher on Mac.
Find vertical tabs in Safari
Safari’s 27.3 developer beta includes a vertical tab layout. On a Mac running the beta, you can enable it from Safari’s View menu. Tabs appear as icons down the left side; widen the bar to show their titles.
The feature is still in beta, so its design and availability may change before release. It gives Safari a familiar way to display tabs, though it doesn’t reproduce all of Arc’s sidebar features.
Set up Control-Tab in Safari
In Arc, Control-Tab returns to the last tab you used; holding Control lets you choose from recent tabs. Safari normally uses Control-Tab to move to the next tab in tab-bar order. TabBack lets you assign that shortcut to recent-tab switching instead.
- Install and open TabBack from the Mac App Store.
- In Safari, open Safari > Settings > Extensions, turn on TabBack, and choose Always Allow on Every Website.
- Open TabBack Settings and set the shortcut to Control-Tab.
- Visit two webpages in Safari. Press and release Control-Tab to return to the first; press it again to switch back.
To choose an older tab, hold Control and tap Tab until the preview you want is selected, then release Control. TabBack keeps recent-tab history per Safari window and switches within the active Tab Group. Website permission lets it track active tabs and create previews; that information is processed on your Mac.
Use Safari’s built-in shortcuts
If you mainly switch between a fixed pair of tabs, Safari’s Command-1 through Command-9 shortcuts may be enough: they select tabs by position. See how to toggle between two Safari tabs for the setup and limitations.