Help shape the future of Tab Groups in Firefox!

[dsandoz]

Hello everyone,

My name is Devin Sandoz and I’m a product marketing manager at Mozilla. @ssmagula is the product manager. I'm posting on behalf of the Tab Groups team who are working to help you be more productive and happy when using Firefox. We want to thank you for all your helpful feedback in Mozilla Connect and invite you to help us improve Tab Groups before a wider release. 

What are Tab Groups?

Tab Groups will help you organize your tabs. Whether you keep your tab bar tidy with just a few tabs or you hoard thousands of tabs, Tab Groups will make it easier than ever to switch between and re-find tabs and tasks—all while maintaining the privacy of Firefox. Say you’re planning a vacation over spring break. A group will help you to keep all your flight searches, lodging options, local restaurants in one easy to re-find place.

Join the Firefox Tab Groups Preview

1. Download Firefox Beta — Tap the Download button, follow the instructions to install, and then launch Firefox Beta. If you already have Beta installed, update to the latest version
2. Use tab groups for all your browser tasks
3. Share your feedback, comments, questions, possible bugs, and ideas for the future in this thread. Your feedback will be valuable as we work through known issues and discover new issues.

Tab groups in action

Tab groups help you stay organized and focused

Creating groups

Once fully released, there will be a helpful call-out explaining how to create groups. To create a group drag a tab on top of another tab and pause until you see a highlighted drop area, then release it. Or right-click any tab and select Add tab to group. Next you can name it. For example, you might want to create a group called News. Add news sites by dragging them into any expanded group. When you’re done catching up on the news, select “Save and close group” so you can remove it from your tab bar and re-open the group the next day. All your groups—open and closed—are always available via the “list all tabs menu” (a downward-facing caret at the right of the tab bar)—even if you close a window or restart, no account needed. 

Known issues

Our team is working hard to make Firefox Tab Groups the best they can be, and we thank you for your help and patience as we discover and smooth out any rough edges.

Faster, better, easier

At Firefox Tab Groups are just part of a larger effort to improve browser productivity. Our designers and developers are creating new tools to improve productivity and efficiency including a sidebar with vertical tabs, better profiles. Our goal is to help you achieve more with less effort so that you can focus on your spring break vacation, and not on your tabs or the browser.

We can't wait for you to try Tab Groups so you can tell us what you think!

[ssmagula]

Hello @Nico4 , I hear you. If you'd like the groups and tabs to be restored to your tab bar each time you restart the browser, please navigate to about:preferences and in the Startup section at the top of the page you'll see an option to enable "Open previous windows and tabs."

[GoLLuM13]

Tha would be great if we had something comparable to the Chromium-Browser extension "Tab Groups Extension" where we can setup rules for auto tabs, example I can set up a group-tab called "Shopping" with rules like hostname includes "amazon" - "Newegg" or "ebay" and whenever I open a page on these websites it automatically go to the group "Shopping" or create it if it isn't there yet, and I can do the same with many others groups (e-mail, social networks, news...), making it easier to manage tabs (and groups) and the experience is customized to everyone's liking

[Steeltent]

It looks like we can't move the groups around at the moment. 

That seems like a big oversight that should be addressed before the official release.

[ssmagula]

@Steeltent If you download Firefox Nightly, you can test out repositioning tab groups on the tab bar. As more information becomes available, we'll announce it.

[WhiffCityUSA]

A keyboard shortcut to add a new tab to the right (and in the current group) would be great. I see I can right click a tab and add a new tab to the right, but I don't think there's any way to do that from the keyboard.

I used to use the following shortcuts and loved it

Cmd+T: open a new tab to the right. The new tab remains in the current tab group if there is one
Cmd+Y: open a new tab at the end of my tab list. The new tab is not in a group

I think adding a "New tab to right" to the file menu would be very helpful and allow us to bind shortcuts to it.

[Eris]

First of all, this is awesome. Thank you!

In no particular order, the following additions/changes awesome for my workflow.

1. Drag a tab (or several) into a closed group.
2. Add tabs to the current group either after the current tab or at the end of the group using keybinds.
3. Move groups by dragging. Maybe including selecting multiple groups at the same time. Dragging into a new window.
4. Clarify "Save an close groups". To me it's not clear what it does (i.e where it saves to and how to restore it).
5. Fine tune creating a group by dragging one tab on to another. (Feels a bit finicky atm.)
6. Collapse all groups at once.
7. Share groups to other devices
8. Autogrouping by website or other attribute.
9. Search for tabs within a group.
10. Hovering on other group shows maybe the number of tabs it contains or a preview of the tabs.
11. Maybe subjective, but I think closing the last non-grouped tab shouldn't open a closed group.
12. Reopening a previously closed tab (Ctrl+shift+t) should probably add back to the original group.

[LizardInBigCoat]

Suggestion/request, I like the idea of having the option to have the tab groups pinned in the new vertical sidebar even if vertical tabs are disabled.

In such cases, on selecting a group from the vertical sidebar, the group of tabs appear in the horizontal tab bar. Ungrouped tabs remain in the horizontal tab bar like normal.

I'd also like more clarification on how tab groups interact with the 'Clear Browsing & Download History On Close' setting. I know that setting prevents pinned tabs from persisting between sessions, and I would like to know whether that oversight applies to tab groups data as well, or if there will be an option to clear browsing history, but not clear tabs from tab groups between sessions. (Or if tab groups are retained using a different method).

[BenL]

What I really want is for Firefox to have a Workspaces feature exactly like Zen Browser, but in Firefox. It is literally the only feature keeping Firefox from being my daily driver.