Help shape Tab Groups on Firefox Mobile for Android!

[justinb]

Hey everyone!

My name is Justin, and I’m part of the team working on Tab Groups for Firefox on Android. We’re excited to start getting this feature into your hands and would love your help shaping it before a wider release. 

What are Tab Groups?
Tab Groups help you organize your open tabs into named groups, making it easier to stay focused and switch between different tasks. Whether you're planning a trip, researching a topic, or juggling work and personal browsing, Tab Groups keep related tabs together and easy to find.

Try it now in Firefox Nightly!
An early version of Tab Groups is available by default in Firefox Nightly with limited functionality, and we’d love for you to test it out and share your thoughts.

How to create a tab group:

• Open the tab tray

• Select a tab

• Tap the overflow menu (top-right)

• Tap “Add to group”

• Name your group and assign a color

• Press Save

What’s coming next
We’re actively working on improvements, including support for drag-and-drop to create tab groups - making the experience faster and more intuitive. We're also finalizing the new Tab Groups page in the tab tray where you will have a dedicated space for all your groups. 

Share your feedback
Your input is incredibly valuable at this stage. Please share your feedback, ideas, and any issues you encounter in this thread so we can continue improving the experience. 

Thanks for helping us build a better Firefox for Android - we can’t wait to hear what you think!

[albertjohn3038]

Just some requests for tap groups :

- Please allow closing and saving tab Groups like in Chromium.

- please implement the tab groups API for webextensions in android

- low priority but please add syncing for tab Groups across all devices. 

[justinb]

Thanks for the requests! Closing and saving is coming soon, and we have started initial stages of adding sync, but the majority of that work will fall into next quarter. 

We hadn't yet planned on adding the API but I'm going to pass this to the team for feedback! 

[Gur212]

I'm so happy this is finally being implemented! In addition to syncing and drag and drop, I'd like to have the option to open a link within the tab group (or to create one with the current tab if not already in one) when long pressing a link. I'd also like a little bar to quickly switch between open tabs in the current group like on Chrome, since you'll often be switching back and forth between tabs in a group.

[justinb]

Glad to hear this and thank you for the feedback! Opening within a tab group and switching between open tabs in your group are both on our to-do list. We will be working on them right after drag and drop gets shipped into release, which is coming soon! 

[Mazshu]

I've downloaded Firefox Nightly solely for the purpose of sharing my feedback, and from 5-10 minutes of using tab groups, I have three suggestions:

 - When pressing and holding a tab to drag it, you should have the option to, when you hover over another tab while dragging, be able to immediately put it into a tab group.

 - Have the option to ungroup ALL tabs when clicking on a tab group - or even in the overflow menu.

 - Have the option to take a single tab out of a tab group. (I might've missed it, but I didn't see an option to take a tab out of a tab group without closing the tab or deleting the tab group as a whole)

[justinb]

Hey! Totally agree, we are doing all three of these.  

Drag and drop is P1 and coming very soon. You'll notice the animations for it landed today in the latest version of Nightly, just wrapping up the rest.  

[idkupick1]

 would it be possible to make it so when you hover a tab over a tab group (or another tab) to add the tab t

[justinb]

100% this is top priority and coming very soon! In the updated version of Nightly you'll notice the drag and drop animations for this landed today - we're just finished up the rest.

[idkupick1]

this isnt an option on chrome so idk how hard it would be to do but can you make it so you can share the tab group, either something that opens firefox and automatically adds the group there or just copies a list of links for the tabs in the group

[justinb]

Yes! We will be adding the ability to share tab groups. The share button is in the tab group window right now in Nightly, it just doesn't work yet. Coming soon after we finish drag and drop to add/create groups. 

[liubomirwm]

Make sure not to load all 10 tabs from a "sent" tab group on Desktop and vice versa. Lazy load / activate them.

[kijijiqueen]

I am so happy this is in the works! Please allow for tab grouping when long pressing a link. This would add the new link to a group with another tab that contains the website that the link came from. Thanks!

[justinb]

Great suggestion! That will be fairly easy to add once we wrap up the core functionality here soon - so I've just added it to our next in line. Thanks for the feedback 

[Watery_Graves]

If it's possible, I think the sync page in the tab tray that shows the tabs you have on other devices should also show the tab groups from those devices. I have a lot of grouped tabs on my computer, and I've noticed that when I'm using the mobile app and looking at my desktop tabs from the sync page, it feels like I'm looking at a ton of disorganized tabs at once and don't know where to start because it shows them out of order by themselves (Usually ordered by the last one you clicked on) instead of the groups they're in. This makes it difficult when you're looking for one specific tab and you have to continuously scroll to find it, while on desktop you could easily find it by clicking on the tab group you put it in. If you could see the group each tab is under on the sync page and be able to open and collapse them, it would help things feel more organized and less overwhelming, as someone who frequently goes back and forth from their computer to their phone.

[justinb]

I'm with you on this, adding tab groups to sync would help a lot with de-cluttering. We have started initial design stages of adding sync, but the majority of that work will fall into next quarter. More to come on that as this feature progresses. Thank you for this feedback! 

[Kvin]

Hi, it's great that tab grouping is available in Firefox for desktop, and that it's coming to Firefox Mobile!

i have a few questions—I'd love to hear your thoughts on them, and if any of them are in the plans?

The ability to auto-group tabs by domain or title? And also semi-manual grouping, like in the desktop version.

i use horizontal tabs in Firefox Mobile

Will tab grouping support horizontal tabs—that is, dragging one tab onto another to group them?

And the ability to group tabs by dragging them into grouped tab labels, just like in the desktop version of the browser?

And please, add the option to move the horizontal tab bar to the bottom—this is very important. Please push this idea forward so the developers can see it🙏

Bug 2012357 Enable option for tab strip at bottom of screen (mobile)

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2012357

We are very grateful for the improvements to our favorite browser!

[justinb]

Hey! Thanks for all these great suggestions. We will support horizontal tabs, and our P1 right now is the drag and drop functionality you mentioned, which will be done very soon. We just landed the animations for dragging today in the update for Nightly, just wrapping up the rest. 

As for auto-grouping, this is something we want to offer but is a little further out. We want to get it right, so making it opt-in would be important to give full choice. We do not want to automatically group tabs on your behalf without consent. Agreed this would be a helpful feature. Thanks for the feedback! 

[Kvin]

So, does support for horizontal tabs mean you’ll be able to drag a horizontal tab onto another tab to group them?
And the ability to drag a tab onto a group label to add it to a group?
Like in this GIF?

[Kvin]

And as shown in the screenshot

[Blimpier]

Yes please!

Need to be able to name the groups.

In the Tabs overview, drag one tab onto another to form the group.

Where you have the three options up top: Private, Tabs, Sync, please add Groups. Grouped tabs (on Android) is a huge advantage, due to small screen size, so please make them easily accessible.

Thanks @justinb 

[Mkn]

Hi, thanks for this useful feature!

Could you add a feature to show the number of tabs in groups, and display tab icons and names in the group grids?

And please add the ability to pin tabs🙏

Are workspaces also in the plans?

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/help-shape-tab-groups-on-firefox-mobile-for-android/m-p/1...

[liubomirwm]

Hi! I'd like to request an easy way to open the view of a tab group. Now we have to:

1. Click the tab button
2. Click the tab group
3. Click / choose another tab

My request is:

1. Long hold the tab button OR swipe up gesture OR smh else (maybe allow customizing what the swipe up gesture shows - current tab group or all tabs, and keep the "tab" button current logic) - is just one way of doing it.
2. Just click on a tab from the current group to switch to it.

[RikaReh]

One thing that I noticed right away: yes, you can create tab-groups, but you can't seem to add new tabs to a group. You can drag a tab over the group and it reacts - like it does on Chrome, for example - but then when you let go of it, it jumps back to its original position. you can't open a new tab in a group either. So the only way to group tabs right now is to open a bunch of tabs, mark them and *then* add the to a group together. But no further adding to this group is possible. Kinda defeats the purpose.

[myspace]

Will this be coming to ios soon too? My top requests are being able to sync tab groups and also easily share tab groups (with others). Thank you. 

[EskCresh]

You're probably well aware of this, but there doesn't seem to be a way to open a tab once it's been put into a group if you're in List view, and tab groups don't show up in the regular tab list in List view (but do count towards the open tabs counter).

[EskCresh]

I see this has improved already! Hopefully we can get a true List display for groups instead of the Grid-style popup eventually.

[chaimss]

Thank you! I realize this is a lower volume use case, But as a foldable/tablet user, it would be nice to have an experience more akin to desktop when you have that extra real estate. I.e. having them at the top (or bottom) of the screen, tapping expands and contracts the tabs in the group, and being able to side scroll through them.