tabbed display mode and tab_strip manifest member

Limited availabilityNot supported in Firefox (Desktop), Firefox (Android), Safari (macOS), Safari (iOS)WICG draft

tabbed is a display mode that gives an installed app a tab strip inside its own window, so the user can keep several in-scope pages open side by side without the browser’s address bar. It is requested through display_override, not through display, and the companion tab_strip member configures the strip: a pinned home tab with its own URL scope and the URL the new-tab button opens.

Chrome 126, Edge 126, and Samsung Internet 28.0 process the value (BCD html.manifest.display_override.tabbed); the Chrome for Developers page records the feature as shipped on ChromeOS, and desktop Chrome on Windows, macOS, and Linux shows the strip for installed apps from the same milestone. Firefox 157, Safari 27, and Android WebView skip the entry and use the next display_override value or display.

Member

• Type: "tabbed" is a string inside the display_override array. tab_strip is an object with two optional keys: home_tab (false, or an object with scope_patterns, an array of URL pattern objects resolved against the manifest URL, and icons) and new_tab_button (an object with url, resolved against the manifest URL and required to be within scope).
• Default: without tab_strip the app behaves as { "tab_strip": { "new_tab_button": { "url": "<start_url>" } } } and has no home tab. tab_strip is ignored unless the resolved display mode is tabbed.
• Example value: "display_override": ["tabbed"] with "tab_strip": { "home_tab": { "scope_patterns": [{ "pathname": "/dashboard/*" }] }, "new_tab_button": { "url": "/new" } }.

The home tab is pinned: navigations to a URL matching one of its scope_patterns stay in it, and navigations outside those patterns open a new app tab. When home_tab is present but scope_patterns is absent, the home tab’s scope collapses to start_url alone. The new-tab button is only rendered when its url falls outside the home tab’s scope; a url inside it hides the button, because the home tab already covers that destination (WICG explainer).

Field notes

Chrome 155 on macOS 26 (English UI), installed app with "display_override": ["tabbed"]: matchMedia('(display-mode: tabbed)').matches returns true in the app window and false when the same origin is opened in a browser tab, and the app window draws a tab strip with a + button at the position the new_tab_button.url would open. The same manifest opened in Chrome 125 returns false for the query and launches in the standalone mode named by display.

Examples

The three manifests describe the same project-management app with a dashboard at /dashboard/ and per-project pages at /projects/<id>/.

Opting in with a standalone fallback

tabbed goes first in display_override; display stays standalone so Chrome 125, Firefox, and Safari launch an ordinary app window. Nothing else is required for a working tab strip, because the default tab_strip opens new tabs at start_url.

{
  "start_url": "/dashboard/",
  "scope": "/",
  "display": "standalone",
  "display_override": ["tabbed"]
}

With this manifest every link to a project page opens in a new app tab, and the dashboard is just one tab among them, closable like any other.

Pinning the dashboard as the home tab

Adding home_tab turns the dashboard into a pinned first tab that stays open and that absorbs every navigation under /dashboard/. The new-tab button points at /projects/new, which is outside the home tab’s patterns, so the button is shown.

{
  "start_url": "/dashboard/",
  "scope": "/",
  "display": "standalone",
  "display_override": ["tabbed"],
  "tab_strip": {
    "home_tab": {
      "scope_patterns": [{ "pathname": "/dashboard/*" }],
      "icons": [{ "src": "/icons/home-96.png", "sizes": "96x96" }]
    },
    "new_tab_button": { "url": "/projects/new" }
  }
}

Pointing new_tab_button.url at /dashboard/ instead would hide the button, since that destination is already the home tab.

Adapting navigation to the mode the browser chose

A tabbed app can let the OS tab strip replace an in-page tab bar, but only when the mode was granted. The check runs at startup and again on change, because the user can move the window between modes.

const tabbed = matchMedia('(display-mode: tabbed)');

function applyMode(active) {
  document.documentElement.dataset.nav = active ? 'os-tabs' : 'in-page';
}

applyMode(tabbed.matches);
tabbed.addEventListener('change', (event) => applyMode(event.matches));

With data-nav="in-page" the app renders its own tab bar; with os-tabs it hides that bar and opens project pages with window.open(url) so each becomes an app tab.

See also

• display_override manifest member
• display manifest member
• Desktop PWA installation: Chrome, Edge, and beyond
• Manifest Incubations: tabbed application mode explainer (wicg.github.io)
• Tabbed application mode for PWAs (developer.chrome.com)

Specifications

Specification	Status
Web App Manifest: display_override "tabbed" mode	WICG draft
Manifest Incubations: display_override member	WICG draft

• Legend
• Yes
• Partial
• Flag
• No
• Unknown

Browser / Platform	Support	Versions	Confidence	Source	Notes
Chrome (Desktop)	Yes	126	high	source	—
Chrome (Android)	Yes	126	high	source	1
Edge (Desktop)	Yes	126	high	source	2
Firefox (Desktop)	No	—	high	source	3
Firefox (Android)	No	—	high	source	45
Safari (macOS)	No	—	high	source	6
Safari (iOS)	No	—	high	source	78
Samsung Internet	Yes	28.0	high	source	9
WebView (Android)	No	—	high	source	10

1. Derived by browser-compat-data mirroring from Chrome.
2. Derived by browser-compat-data mirroring from Chrome.
3. No Firefox support is recorded in browser-compat-data.
4. No Firefox for Android support is recorded in browser-compat-data.
5. Derived by browser-compat-data mirroring from Firefox.
6. No Safari support is recorded in browser-compat-data.
7. No Safari on iOS support is recorded in browser-compat-data.
8. Derived by browser-compat-data mirroring from Safari.
9. Derived by browser-compat-data mirroring from Chrome Android.
10. No WebView Android support is recorded in browser-compat-data.

Source data: /compatibility/manifest-tabbed-display.json · Global usage: 72 % (StatCounter 2026-05)

Source: spec · MDN · Last verified 2026-10-03 · Confidence: high (computed from sources)