How to change Safari tabs back to stacked iOS 15

Hi JMurchie,

Thank you for posting in Apple Support Communities. We understand you'd like to change the way Safari displays tabs in iOS 15.

"You can choose between the top Single Tab you’re used to and the new bottom Tab Bar layout.

1. Go to Settings > Safari, then scroll down to Tabs.
2. Select either the Tab Bar or Single Tab layout.
3. You can move between layouts without losing the tabs you have open."

As discussed here: Customize your Safari settings on iPhone

Cheers!

Alas, it seems like we're stuck with it unless we change browsers. I moved to Opera, which does stacked-view tabs, and I made sure to let the company know why I switched to their platform. Very happy with it now that I've had time to familiarize. Took me hours to transfer all my open tabs and my favorites, but I'm done with Safari unless stacked-view tabs return. Especially because of Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Adobe, I'm sick to death of forced changes to basic features and functions that worked well and made sense.

As a side note: I'm also finding that I've become very impatient with familiar, reliable things being suddenly upended since the pandemic threw life into chaos. Just leave things alone if they're not broken. Our phones have meant more to us than ever over the past year-plus, and Apple might be smarter at this particular moment to NOT constantly tinker with them just for the heck of it.

There isn’t a way to change tabs back to stacking which is why K Schaffer’s above post suggested users send their frustrations straight to apple via these two links as this page is only a forum for users to help each other.

• Product Feedback - Apple | main link

//www.apple.com/feedback/

• Feedback - Safari - Apple [Use to report Both: iOS and macOS]

//www.apple.com/feedback/safari.html

It's been months and I have yet to see a fix for this cumbersome, ill-advised change. I tend to have a lot of open tabs for writing projects and general research, and for me tile view has made Safari so awkward I consider it unusable. Can't see anything because the tiles are too small. I have closed tabs by accident multiple times. it's infuriating. I've owned iPhones from the first model and this is one of the most frustrating, pointless changes I can recall.

I just downloaded Opera because it has stacked view tabs, though it's not as smooth and efficient as Safari's used to be. It'll do, though. Hopefully Apple will come to its senses and un-fix what wasn't broken. Tile view could've just been an option, but no.

Just got Opera - thanks for the suggestion - it seems excellent, so far, and how good it is to have the stacked view back!

This didn't work for me. But as someone else on here kindly suggested, using the Opera browser instead of Safari brings back the stacked view! I've moved... but I hope Apple is listening.

If you turn your phone to landscape instead of portrait, the websites return to their stacked view.

Perhaps time has come (again) to report an issue, by use of this tool:

• Product Feedback - Apple | main link

//www.apple.com/feedback/

• Feedback - Safari - Apple [.Use to report Both: iOS and macOS.]

//www.apple.com/feedback/safari.html

While my older Macs do OK with ESR Firefox versions.. even older

PPC G3/G4/intel, had run TenFourFox; until last build: in Oct 2021.

Have installed Brave for Mac. (chrome-based) Download For iOS.

An experimental/project. ~Have many bookmarks saved in Firefox.

Again:

..Ask again! ~ Through the only direct channel available..

Give Apple your ideas, via 'Product Feedback' portal links:

• Product Feedback - Apple | main link

//www.apple.com/feedback/

• Feedback - Safari - Apple [..To report Both: iOS iPad+iPhone & macOS..]

//www.apple.com/feedback/safari.html

Use Opera browser. It’s free and doesn’t have issues. Stacked view is available.

Firefox

Tammy talking: There is no solution except to use another browser. Apple isn’t responding to the pleas to change it back the way it was.

Enable Landscape tab bar if it’s turned off and rotate your phone to view horizontally / landscape view and you will see all the tabs showing up at the top with x mark next to them.

As @Beerstar and others note from a position of technical knowledge on HCI and UX (User eXperience) design, the tab changes are objectively poorer at performing the same job (i.e. not just subjective 'do not like the change' but objective 'do this for a living and the change is harder to use'). There is plenty of feedback through the middle part of last year (2021) which indicated objection to the new layout proposals but that didn't manifest in the releases. Perhaps Apple does not see Safari/browser choice as a market differentiator. Safari looking more like the other equivalents for market presence or user portability or future code maintenance may be more important than considering the usability of the Apple option.

This feels counter-intuitive given that Apple in general and iPhones in particular have usually focused on user experience being exemplary, but it is difficult to identify other non-UX rationales for Apple making this change on tabs - why expend effort on redevelopment and user education/impact plus create dissatisfaction in a part of the existing user base for an objectively inferior UI/UX?

Regardless of the reason, Apple's direction of travel on browser appears to be 'go with the crowd' even if that is a worse UX.

Duck Duck Go & Opera - both excellent replacements for this horrendously awful Safari ‘update’. Duck Duck Go has built in anti-tracking features as well as searches that offer a broader range of more in-depth, relevant results (including sites w/ facts & those w/ a variety of perspectives… no FB & Twitter-type ‘editing’). I also found research studies in medical journals from around the world that never showed up on Safari. Hope this helps.