There is an important distinction, however. Split View itself is not new, and Brave’s official changelog describes the edge-drag setting as “Re-enabled.” The desktop release notes for version 1.99.55, dated November 5, 2026, confirm the setting’s return—not a promise that it is enabled by default on every installation.
What changed—and how to try it
Brave’s release notes identify the relevant setting as “Allow split view drag-and-drop on left or right edge of window”, located at brave://settings/braveContent. That gives desktop users a specific place to check rather than repeatedly dragging tabs and hoping for a different result. The notes do not specify operating-system restrictions or rollout conditions.
If the option is available in your installation, check that it is enabled before trying the gesture. The interaction described by PiunikaWeb is:
- Drag an open tab toward the left or right edge of the Brave window.
- Wait for the Create split view prompt.
- Release the tab over the indicated target to combine the pages into a side-by-side view.
Precision matters here. Brave’s GitHub design issue describes drop targets on either side of the page area: dropping into a target creates a split, while dropping outside those targets creates a separate window. That issue documents the intended interaction, rather than guaranteeing identical behavior in every shipped configuration, but it explains why waiting for the visible target is sensible.
The practical attraction is straightforward. Comparing documentation with a web application, or checking two versions of a document, is exactly the sort of task where bringing the pages together feels more natural than switching back and forth.
If dragging fails, use the documented fallback
The new gesture is another entrance to an existing feature, not the only entrance. Brave’s Help Center documents a context-menu workflow that avoids edge dragging altogether:
- Right-click an open tab.
- Select New Split View.
- Brave places that page on the left and a new-tab page on the right.
- Select the right-hand pane and navigate to the second page you want to use.
Both pages remain independently usable within the same browser window.
Once the split is open, drag the vertical divider to adjust the space allocated to each page. The divider’s three-dot menu lets you swap their positions or separate them again. Alternatively, right-click either split tab and select Swap Tab Positions or Unsplit tabs.
The useful distinction: a missing drag prompt does not, by itself, establish that Split View is unavailable. The tab-context-menu method is separately documented by Brave.
Reported rough edges need careful qualification
PiunikaWeb’s testing was not entirely smooth. Its author reported that some drag attempts produced a compact window instead of a split, associating that behavior with macOS window arrangement. The author also said the split prompt failed to appear with vertical tabs, despite restarts and full-screen testing. These are observations from that reporter’s setup—not established Windows defects or a universal statement that vertical tabs are unsupported.
The report also mentions an X comment alleging trouble with multiple monitors, while explicitly acknowledging that PiunikaWeb could not independently verify it. That is not sufficient evidence to label multi-monitor configurations incompatible.
Brave’s release-note entry confirms the setting’s return but does not resolve those compatibility questions. For readers encountering inconsistent behavior, the defensible approach is to check the setting, release only when the split target appears, and use New Split View from the tab menu if the gesture remains unreliable.
A useful shortcut, not a multitasking reinvention
The change is best understood as a discoverability improvement. Brave already supports two independently usable pages inside one window; edge dragging makes that arrangement easier to invoke when the gesture works as intended. The official evidence supports the return of the setting, while PiunikaWeb’s experience supplies a reason to keep the established fallback handy.
For anyone who routinely works across two browser tabs, that is a worthwhile convenience. Just wait for the split prompt before letting go—otherwise, your neatly planned workspace may acquire an unexpected extra window.