How to change Safari tabs back to stacked iOS 15

I HATE the new grid tabs, I wish I never updated. it’s hard for me to see as I’m visually impaired. I might have to get a different phone. The new iOS is too complicated and requires more steps to do what I want. Keep it simple and efficient. I have to look up simple functions to see how to access them. Apple is out of touch with what people want and will lose their fan base. Wake up Apple!

This new way of using tabs Is not user-friendly and your answer/suggestion doesn’t fix the actual problem being referenced above.

To me this is a “fix” of something that was not broken. If you wanna offer users different ways to process information or use a feature that’s fine but don’t get rid of the one that the vast majority of us are used to and enjoy to give us something that is not helpful and is more time-consuming to use.

I agree with Christopher! Apple doesn’t listen to its users, never have I seen them correct their failures and they are falling out of favor. I’m sight impaired and have many tabs that I can only reference by opening each grid now, what a waste of time. They did this for one handed use and to avoid a stretch of the hand, lol. I’m looking for a new browser or app to stack my tabs and if they keep making poor IOS changes I will be looking for a different phone. Apple HAD the best but they chose to COPY Google 😕. Their IOS is no longer easily intuitive and has many redundant taps where there wasn’t before. Keep it simple.

What perplexes and angers me is that the accessibility aspect--even just for people with modest visual impairments due to normal aging--apparently wasn't even considered. Stacked-view tabs could easily have been left as the default to avoid disruption for those who want or need it, with tile view added as an option.

Even Facebook, arguably the most soulless monster of the tech world, recognizes the need for accessibility and makes a genuine effort toward maximizing it. Meanwhile, Apple couldn't care less if one of their tweaks renders a basic feature of iPhone/Safari more difficult to use, or even unusable, to a whole category of consumers.

I’m so depressed about this. Just updated tonight and am gutted. I inadvertently closed some of my precious tabs because I couldn’t see what was what since the thumbnails are so small. Can’t stand that now they’re not all visible at once. This is the dumbest design!! Im so devastated!! Is there any way to get Apple to change the display of tabs back to stacked? Side by side teeny thumbnails is impossible!!

Appreciate your comment about how our phones and browsing routines have meant a lot for us during pandemic. I couldn’t agree more. I basically have lost my mind tonight contending with the new layout of my tabs, and I can’t stand it. Can’t find anything now; closed several things inadvertently cuz I basically can’t see these teeny tiles. It feels devastating to have my comforting research routine swept away just like that!

100% agreed! My system just updated last night and of course I’ve done all of the things mentioned here as well as anything I’ve been able to find online. Nothing puts the tabs back in the stacked fashion …. that makes the most sense. As another individual mentioned, this is ridiculous… nobody looks at documents this way. Filing cabinets are not set up this way. Filing cabinets have TABS. This might be a really old way to organize things but it’s funny… IT WORKS BEST that way. Go to the office supply store and you’ll find they still make filing cabinets like they did 100 years ago. Why? Because it actually makes the most amount of sense. If there was a better way, it would have been created by now. The one thing you will not see at the office supply store to arrange your files is a gigantic board you nail to your wall and put all of your files and documents … facing you. Why do we slice bread in the manner that we do? Why not slice it long ways? In short, this “update” is nonsense. Obviously somebody fresh out of college with “fresh, new ideas” that don’t work! Likely pulling in super high salary creating these “ideas” and changing things so they are non-functional. This is someone… or group of someones …. that clearly needs some oversight. maybe even a little micromanagement - bad as that sounds, would go along way in avoiding these messes made by the under skilled. Sometimes… things work best the way they are / have been. It simply isn’t necessary to change every single thing all the time. The worst of it, we don’t even get an option. If it was simply a matter of making an adjustment to the settings - like putting the address bar back at the top where it belongs, it really wouldn’t be that big of a deal! The fact that you can’t even change a setting to put it back in the stacked version is, dare I say …. an outrage. The bottom line, I find it hard to believe that there were any complaints about the way it used to be that would have resulted in the development, creation and implementation of this new catastrophe. But hey, on the heels of what we’ve all been through the last two years, can we really expect any different?

It’s been almost two MONTHS and still no fix on this incredibly INFURIATING and insanely INEFFICIENT tab layout design!!! WE NEED STACKED TABS BACK, and we needed this resolved YESTERDAY.

This grid-like tan display is utterly USELESS, and you can’t even rearrange them or move them into priority positions without creating “tab groups.” This is utter INSANITY.

BRING BACK STACKED TABS IMMEDIATELY!!!!!!

I hate the new IPadOS version of Safari. I have lost numerous web pages because of mistakenly creating a new tab group and then closing the wrong one. This is not a change for the better, just an example of how a development group in isolation can come up with a different interface to justify their existence. Give your customers a choice rather than trying to ram something down their throats, and you’ll soon see that we don’t all like the constant change.

"Give your customers a choice rather than trying to ram something down their throats, and you’ll soon see that we don’t all like the constant change."

1000x this, SqueekerCat. Your suspicion about "a development group in isolation" is the best (and only sensible) explanation for why the 'old way' is almost never left as an option in these instances. There would be hard numbers to capture customer dissatisfaction, rather than an small and entirely unscientific sample of users inclined to complain on Apple's social media.

Yeah, this blunder ain't gettin' fixed.

So… you do realize that Apple is ~$3 trillion valued company? Do you really think they are paying ANY attention to our complaints much less fixing/changing things for our benefit? Apple has long since grown past caring what the consumers want or find useful…. clearly some engineer was told to change the Safari app or lose his/her job. So they did. I doubt 99.9% that any marketing research was done prior to implementing the tiling change. They were probably also told they couldn’t consume any more compute/memory to implement a change so they opted to drop the old way for the new way to save resources. So sad….

I agree with sll these complaints, I use safari for multiple investigations and in my over 300 tabs maintain a reference library for consultation, with this tiled open tab interfase it is IMPOSSIBLE to go back 237 to 242 tabs to read up on some required information! What am I going to do, go tab by tab, opening each one at a time to see if that is the right one? And how do I quickly (10 seconds) find another tab near by or far away with more recent information, or information with another perspective or any information needed for whatever reason? For any kind of research this is impossible to use! So obviously that nixes out 95% of all users of safari. I must say this is a very ominous red flag! At the beginning Apple nudged out the competition because it had SOOO many advantages, but with this nonsensical move it is a epiphany that Apple has gone the way of BMW, well, do you like the car? Good! That is, if you like it when it breaks down all the time and is practically “impossible” to fix. We’re going the way of over-engineering, the way of LOSS OF FOCUS ON FUNCTIONALITY, to me it is a symptom that apple has lost it’s guiding vision, and I am truly sorry, because I’ve been with apple for longer than I can recollect the date, and it looks like I will have to move on to another brand. It happens.

I, as a customer, do not feel annoyed, furious,, flabergasted, or any other emotion of that sort. Simply I, have been deprived of a tool that has to functionally work, and unexpectedly, for all practical purposes, the tool has been removed, and I must look for alternatives, and since, where there is a need there is a solution, an alternative solution will appear. I think I lied, I am furious.

Are you kidding me? i don't mean to be rude but that's obviously not what the issue is.. we're dumfounded at the layout and why the tabs aren't 'stacked' anymore when it made so much more sense! Why would anyone Ever make this change and not care that Everybody wants it back the way it was, where you could easily scroll through pages/tabs like a filing cabinet~

& this grouping of tabs isnt helpful at all!

*Please update this~ you should at least allow us to have the option, thank you! ☥

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.

Apple 🍎, here’s a thought••• how about assigning your high paid programmers to FIX stuff that they ‘broke’ or that just

don’t work like, Highlighting in Notes or font changes etc.? you know, things that people really use. You designed an awesome, successful open tab ‘file cabinet’ feature that needed NO improvement EVER ! Show how smart you are by leaving brilliant design as is.