Thousands of users wanted it, so Firefox delivered it. Tab Groups are now live to help you declutter and stay organized while browsing.
I love it, it was basically the only thing I missed when I switched from Chrome to Firefox. I’ve reorganized all of my tabs and everything is so much cleaner than it was a few days ago.
Now we just need jxl, webgpu, and better themes!
The way they did it though… the tab group name cant be collapsed so it takes a lot of room. I find I’m still using task oriented groups from the Simple Tab Groups extension, and then using the new core groups feature as a way to group subtopics for that task.
And before you say “you must have a million tabs”… I used to have millions of tabs, but now i average less than 100 when I have a lot of tasks I need to balance, and I know what all of them are open for. So when I complete a task I delete the Simple Tab Group and say bye to all those tabs.
ive seen this in opera, and instantly ran into the options to disable it. i donno how many tab you guys have in the browser, but may god forgive you all for using the browser wrong.
I’m not usually one to really care about how others use their tools, but I agree with this completely. Tab hoarding is pathological.
I get stressed out if I have enough tabs open in one session so that none of them can display any text… But I will still exit them all every time I exit the browser. What am I a maniac?
Maybe you only have 300 or less but I typically have several windows open.
Why people like 50 tabs at once. I can’t understand.
Close tab button is a lava
Heres a neat easter egg: If you open enough tabs on firefox mobile the number in the tab icon changes to an infinity icon
On Chrome it becomes a smiley face. I use Firefox and my wife still uses Chrome.
I’m constantly trying to keep under that number, lol. It’s a shame Easter egg
Neither can we.
At work I’ll have like 20+ tabs open and I eventually am like F it, close everything and start over. Usually feels good.
Agile and task reprioritization at work.
Too many projects to work on at home.
Games.
agile
Lol sure thing.
You gotta be nimble to navigate through 50+ tabs to find what you are looking for
Hence the groups having the ticket name related to the task I am working on. When the task closes I delete that group once I’ve ensured anything important for future context is documented and then I say goodbye with confidence.
I don’t bookmark things for work tasks, I log them in tickets or commit it to readme/code comments/team docs somewhere.
Edit: I should also note that my workflow uses Simple Tab Groups and not much of this new core feature.
Simple tab groups hides all other tabs and you switch groups via a dropdown. I usually only have 10-12 tabs open at once.
They don’t know how bookmarks work.
Bookmarks are great if I remember what I want is there. Usually bookmarking is like putting a piece of paper in cabinet that I will never open… A tab is leaving the paper on my desk for me that I will rediscover.
Use the bookmarks toolbar then.
This is what I do. You can even create folders with no name that take up very little space on the bookmarks toolbar, and fill them with links. You can have sub-folders within those folders… I truly just do not understand the tab hoarding mentality.
You can also just start typing and set up your search bar to automatically search bookmarks (and history too if you’re afraid of losing something)
to hide thier porn tabs.
adhd. I’m considering making at alert for when my browser uses so much tabs that I’m almost out of RAM
Just install the Auto Tab Discard extension. After a certain amount of time it will replace your loaded tab with a (RAM-free) placeholder that reloads when you click it again. Me, my ADHD brain, and my 500 tabs can be at peace now.
The only way to keep my ADHD at bay when I’m on the computer is to be radical with my tabs. Don’t need it in the next hour? That’s definitely a bookmark, not a tab. I configured my browser to not save tabs between sessions so I always start clean. I’d long be dead otherwise, suffocated by my own browser tabs.
I used to feel the same way. But recently, I just don’t have time to ‘finish’ each tab/section. When I was younger with more time, I could.
For example, the first section of my browser is several self hosted apps I’m currently implementing. So, I don’t want to lose the relevant forum posts/documentation.
The second section is some articles I couldn’t finish reading.
The third section is something I’m researching for my work.
Fourth are media tabs, some YouTube videos I haven’t finished, a music tab, etc etc
So basically, if I had time to read the articles, one section closed. Or finished my implementation, etc.
The hard part this is this is every week. Always new projects, work or personal. Always new studies to read. Always new vids. You get the point.
It’s akin to when everything is urgent, nothing is.
At one point, you gotta accept that you can’t do everything and move on. You can always re-find the information if it comes down to it in the future. Or you can use bookmark folders to be able to eventually go back to what you think is important.
If I have more than 6-7 tabs open, I check what I need to absolutely save and add that to a bookmark folder, then I close my browser and start fresh.
Yup, that’s how operate. I went to help a colleague with some stuff and dude had so many tabs and windows open it took him more time to find the tab he wanted me to see than it wouldn’t taken me to search for it. Annoying
I storing YouTube links that I would watch next time
Bookmarks? Or if you’re logged into youtube, they literally have a “watch later” option to keep track of these.
Text document
“Save to watch later”
Bookmark
There are options
You clearly do not have ADHD. Those are where things go to be forgotten forever.
I do, actually
Bookmark bar is basically identical to tabs in screen location and functionality, so I use those like an adult
Sick, infantalizing others because they don’t like to do things the way that works for you. Super cool, man.
Yeah, that is just asking for data to be forgotten. The functional difference is:
You have your browser with let’s say 30 tabs. You can’t forget what you need to, because they are always open. So to catch up, you have to close out your tabs or lose everything.
Compared to adding something to a list, which requires you to manually go back and remember what you needed to do. But if you have 100 things to every week, and those constantly get added on, you will always lose data to return to if you’re not actively tracking it, hence the tabs.
It’s a very simple concept. A lot of people have a lot less time to do all the things they need to during the week. People on their computers all day, or with less of a workload, can’t comprehend this without opening their mind to a different perspective.
I know, because I used to feel the same way about people who had 20+ tabs. But at that point in time, the thought of not having enough time to get to everything and adding 50+ things to do every week (meaning 200 - 400 new tabs every week) was foreign to me, and your suggestion makes it quite literally impossible without extra work involved, if you care to actually complete everything you wanted.
Text document - very lack of quality features Others - just place where I would forget them forever
So youll just leave them where you would forget them forever instead?
What’s the functional difference between a tab bar and bookmark bar for this specific purpose other than the former taking more resources?
Genuine question because I cannot comprehend
I can’t tell if you’re serious or not. A bookmark bar will never be able to easily contain everything you need. It requires manual review (expanding the bar, manually browsing every bookmark and re-opening tabs [and you’re suggesting to bookmark 50+ pages every week… impossible]). So not only are you implying it would be better to add 2 - 3 additional steps to the workflow, but also you are missing the very functional fact that a bookmark bar is a lot less accessible than a scrollable tab bar with an instantly opened window with what you were working on.
Tabs also remember where you are on the page. I read long studies, and implement complex projects. Bookmarks will re-open every tab at the start of the page, not word 600. There are just too many reasons as to why tabs are more functional than bookmarks and saving data to lists. A big part of it is the size of the persons workflow, someone with a smaller workflow may not be able to see how impactful those additional steps in the process are.
whoa. mozilla doing something the people want?? WHAT PARALLEL WORLD IS THIS?
Don’t worry they say they’ll shove AI in it so it’s definitely our world
So now when I open my mom’s computer, she see 20 tab groups, I’ll know it’s even worse than it looks…
A second browser window is the real solution. Or simply accept the chaos.
No chaos. Only Sidebery.
They added sidebar tabs with this stuff too, doesn’t do a full tree structure and it needs some other work though.
As if I wasn’t already doing that lol I have 64 gigs of ram and I will use 64 gigs of ram!
Oh man, thats even more chaos having a new window for a group of tabs.
(Source: thats my daily experience)
Now do it on mobile and I’ll happily switch
I’ll never understand you people that need like 50 tabs open at once.
Nah, just 200 or more
I used to never close tabs and they would accumulate as I kept doing more web searches and other activities. Now when I need to do stuff I usually open a new window instead for different tasks and if I need to free up RAM then I start closing other windows for tasks I’m not doing anymore so it closes all of the related tabs at the same time
I have a few use cases:
- Many youtube videos that are like 30+ minutes long saved for later
- Documentation on some stuff that I need to go back and forth
- Movies or games that I found, but don’t want to write down and forget
- Going down rabbit holes on wikipedia and saving it for another day
- Everything else that catches my attention and deserves a honorable spot in the tab bar
Basically, I use my browser as a notebook. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Have you heard of bookmarks? There’s a bookmark toolbar, that could look almost exactly the same if you want. Including folders with sub-folders, etc.
So you’re saying that pressing 2 on screen buttons, then closing a page is a better solution than creating a group then dragging in and out whatever you need? Sure, I use the bookmarks bar too, but it’s not for stuff I’ll remove after a while, those are perminent, but tab groups are generally for stuff you will eventually close, but wantto sort in the meantime to make it more convenient.
If you don’t have a use for it, fair enough, I don’t either, but it is a genuinely useful feature for some that can’t be replaced by more clicks.
So a shit ton of tabs that never get looked at again? I swear all of you secretly want your tabs to disappear so you have something to complain about.
Not the slightest! I can perfectly fine live without them, but I would be a little bit sad if they were gone. It happened once after my OneTab extension got somehow corrupted.
I can perfectly fine live without them,
I can stop any time I want, I swear!
I will do my good deed of the month. You seem like a prime candidate for Tab Stash. Does the same but better than Tab Groups. Check it out. You might like it.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-stash/
Let me know, love it or hate it. Cheers.
Hey, this looks like a better OneTab that I always wanted!
It makes me happy to hear that you will find it useful.
Cheers!
Is there some way this could work on android?
I wish. But no. :-(
Tab Stash is great, yes. That’s the answer.
Yeah those all seem like great uses of bookmarks and save functions.
What if I told you bookmarks and tabs have a lot of overlapping use cases, and people prefer one or another because they have different workflows, or just as a matter of personal preference?
Bookmarks are only for the stuff I will always need again. Tabs just for the stuff I haven’t finished yet and don’t want to forget about.
Buddy have I got some news for you. You can actually delete bookmarks when you’re done with them.
Sure, I can also just close the tabs I have open. Same thing, but I like it organized this way.
Closing tab is also faster than deleting bookmark
Sometimes I ended up with +50 tabs because I just don’t close them. But when the computer restart and Firefox ask me to restore them or start a new session, I always go for a new session. And I never felt that I lost something.
I closed my tabs with the window automatically
I have a colleague who even saves all his tabs using a plugin, just in case he will need them at some point.
I dont know, I never have problems finding what I need so dont need to save anything.
Tab groups are great though, I need them so I can have groups with our aws accounts at work. That way i can just quickly get in to any account.
This was the only thing keeping me on chrome at work. Tab groups are so nice for keeping resources related to specific projects together, especially if you’re juggling several features/fixes at the same time.
I’ve never understood this. You guys know you can have multiple Firefox windows, right? What’s the point of tab groups when you can just group related tabs in a different window? Between multiple workspaces, multiple monitors, and multiple browser windows, I never feel the need to have more than 5-10 tabs open on any one of them at a time. More than that and I’m clearly doing something wrong and need to clean up anyway.
tabing through multiple windows of the same program is annoying, having one window with groups is way easier. plus 1-2 monitors is the norm, so sometimes its just a screen space issue.
tabing through multiple windows of the same program is annoying,
How is it any less annoying than tabbing through multiple browser tabs in the same window?
You underestimate the tab hoarders.
I’m also like you where I barely have more than a few tabs open. But I regularly witness people I know fill the tab bar until you can’t read the first 3 letters of the title anymore.
Oh, here’s the ol’ “I have no use for this feature, and I can’t see why anyone else would have one, either”, so I get to check that off my bingo card.
He’s just asking as in, maybe someone can share their perspective on why there may be an advantage to tab groups over windows. And to that end… isn’t there a certain amount of system resources that are increased more with a whole new window as opposed to just more tabs in groups? I would think it would consume more resources, albeit perhaps not to any severe degree. —?
And to the actual question I think visually tab groups are easier to navigate than swapping back through windows. Task managers don’t really tend to present windows in a fashion where you could refer to them in context of one-another. Maybe some custom views that you can install in Linux but even then, ones I’ve tried still don’t quite give you a quick easy overview that shows enough detail. You pretty much see what program you’re swapping to, but not laid out in ways you can compare and choose on the fly the way you want when it’s the same application but different content. That’s my experience, anyhow.
It’s called the ‘inner platform effect’. They are basically replicating parts of the underlying platform (the OS in this case) inside their own application, until the application turns into a platform itself, one crappier than the one below it. You see this happening with web browsers and ‘web apps’.
Switching between windows is far less fluid than switching between tabs.
Then maybe switch to a better OS / Window manager?
It doesn’t matter which one you have.
Ever since i switched to zen browser i hace not thought of coming back for a second.
I tried it -> couldn’t figure out how to get rid off vertical tabs -> uninstalled -> installed Librewolf
Yea Zen is amazing, especially the neat Workspaces feature.
I’m still going back to Firefox because of tab groups.
live to help you declutter
Me ready to clutter even more 😈
Hi sorry to bother, how come your name is red in voyager? Tyvm
Hey no bother at all, I think it’s just because I’m an admin in my instance
Ahh makes sense, thank you!
Right??! So instead of clutter of tabs it will be clutter of tab groups… of tabs, lol.
Now that’s my kinda thing!
There is only solace in chaos
After everybody else yeah… woopie fkn doo. I say this as a LibreWolf user and using Firefox on alt PC.
Maybe add some decent vertical tabs too?
I’ve started using vertical tabs in Firefox as soon as I got the notification. I never thought I would have liked them so much.
Why are you asking for decent vertical tabs? Are they inferior to some other browser you have in mind?
I like Arc’s user experience with vertical tabs. They are bigger, easier to organize and they are cleaner. Also, the sidebar toggle is hard to work with, ideally I would prefer the ability to toggle with a shortcut or reveal on hover.
Aside Arc, Zen browser has a good vertical tab experience.
Overall, I still main firefox for my personal browser, though it’s UX is still lacking.
I’ve been using the tree-style-tabs plugin for the last 4 years, because I like vertical tabs, and nesting it provides.
But now that Firefox actually finally has proper vertical tabs, and tab groups, I can move away from tree-style-tabs (I don’t use any of its other features).
I wanted to like them but I dont know, I think they are more natural at the top still.
I’m going to stick it out for maybe a couple months (past this first ~month period) just to see if maybe they are superior somehow
What’s wrong about it? I really like it.
Vertical tabs are working great in FireDragon.
Wait, how do you turn them on?
Go to Settings > Design, and then under Tab Bar Style select “Vertical Tab Bar (experimental)”. I recommend checking the “Collapse Vertical Tab Bar” checkbox, too. That way, the tab bar collapses into icons when your cursor isn’t over it, taking up less window space.
