Thousands of users wanted it, so Firefox delivered it. Tab Groups are now live to help you declutter and stay organized while browsing.
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’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 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 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.
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.
As if I wasn’t already doing that lol I have 64 gigs of ram and I will use 64 gigs of ram!
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.
Oh man, thats even more chaos having a new window for a group of tabs.
(Source: thats my daily experience)
Meh. The number of tabs I have open at any given time almost never exceeds six. If I don’t need em, I close em. I do make use of bookmark folders: I have three folders called ‘Today’, ‘Weekend’ and ‘Temp’, which is the order of going though websites I have saved. That way, I take action on every website I’ve added to those folders and end up with no tab clutter or bookmark hoarding.
Folders as a to do mechanism sounds interesting.
I’m wondering if a date-based system could work.
live to help you declutter
Me ready to clutter even more 😈
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
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!
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
Now do it on mobile and I’ll happily switch
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.
I’m glad they’ve added it to desktop, but based on my usage it’s more important for me on mobile. Hopefully they bring it to Android soon.
As someone who is disgusted by people’s browser tab hygiene on desktop, I will say that I do have this issue on mobile. But it’s really more about how the browser is set up (on Android at least). Every single link I click opens a new tab, and I almost never scroll through existing tabs because, out of sight out of mind.
A million times this. But now the backend is done, hopefully mobile isn’t that far off.
Agreed. But I’m glad it’s native to desktop Firefox now. Grouping tabs in desktop works for me to hide the hundreds of tabs I keep to tens of groups 🤪
Ever since i switched to zen browser i hace not thought of coming back for a second.
Yea Zen is amazing, especially the neat Workspaces feature.
I’m still going back to Firefox because of tab groups.
I tried it -> couldn’t figure out how to get rid off vertical tabs -> uninstalled -> installed Librewolf
This is the last thing to make me switch to Librewolf.
Why this would be a reason? Librewolf will have tab groups too. They don’t change the main structure, they just harden Firefox.
I use Brave rn.
Oh, you mean you were waiting for tab groups. Sorry, without enough context I thought you were telling one of those bullshit reasons people use against Firefox. Well then, see you with Librewolf soon.
Nice :)
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.
Why people like 50 tabs at once. I can’t understand.
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
At work I’ll have like 20+ tabs open and I eventually am like F it, close everything and start over. Usually feels good.
Neither can we.
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.
adhd. I’m considering making at alert for when my browser uses so much tabs that I’m almost out of RAM
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.
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.
to hide thier porn tabs.
Close tab button is a lava
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)
I do this too. Folders in the bookmarks toolbar. If I’m not done with a topic I just drag-and-drop these tabs into a folder. If you middle click one of these folders every bookmarks opens in a new tab for quick access.
This person gets it.
You can hide the bookmark bar to save vertical space and then it’s just a more organized, forgotten bookmark list. Using a search engine to find the page again is more likely for me than a bookmaker 😅 (if no tab).
And don’t forget that you can add tags to your bookmarks to make them easier to find again.
Heres a neat easter egg: If you open enough tabs on firefox mobile the number in the tab icon changes to an infinity icon
I’m constantly trying to keep under that number, lol. It’s a shame Easter egg
On Chrome it becomes a smiley face. I use Firefox and my wife still uses Chrome.
I storing YouTube links that I would watch next time
Text document
“Save to watch later”
Bookmark
There are options
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.
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.
Says the guy trying to fuse disability as a reason to insult someone. Grow up
I never intended to insult you, I was merely explaining how my ADHD manifests.
I made the incorrect assumption that you were coming from a more neurotypical perspective, and for that, I sincerely apologize, but nowhere did I insult you. If you took this as an insult, again, my apologies.
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.
Bookmarks? Or if you’re logged into youtube, they literally have a “watch later” option to keep track of these.
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.
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’.
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.
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?
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.
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.
