Option to Auto-Hide Top Address Bar / Toolbar when using Vertical Tabs (Without F11 Fullscreen)

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Yes. Now that Brave natively supports hiding the vertical tab strip completely until hovering, the biggest remaining block of wasted screen real estate is the top toolbar header (the main address bar, navigation keys, and extension icons).

Currently, the only way to hide the top toolbar in Brave is to use Fullscreen Mode (F11). However, this implementation breaks the user workflow. Because F11 completely takes over the screen display, it entirely blocks the native Windows Taskbar at the bottom.

Even for users who keep their Windows taskbar configured to “Automatically hide in desktop mode” (where it slides up only on cursor hover), entering F11 Fullscreen completely disables the OS-level hover trigger. You cannot bring up your taskbar or switch applications seamlessly without exiting fullscreen entirely.

Describe the solution you’d like

I would like an explicit appearance toggle to “Auto-hide top toolbar” during standard windowed or maximized browser states (without entering F11 Fullscreen).

  • Behavior: The top address bar header should completely collapse upward and vanish, giving web content 100% vertical screen space.

  • Trigger: When the user moves their mouse cursor to the absolute top edge of the window frame, the address bar should smoothly slide downward over the webpage content (exactly like the layout handling found in Microsoft Edge). It should slide back out of view the moment the cursor moves away.

Describe alternatives you’ve considered

  • Using F11 Fullscreen: Ruined because it completely kills the Windows taskbar slide-up functionality at the bottom of the screen.

  • Switching to other Chromium forks (like Edge) that already support borderless, windowed auto-hide parameters for the top header mesh.

Additional context

This option is critical for users running clean, minimal desktop environments who want full screen utilization without compromising operating system multitasking and taskbar availability.

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