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!

[MartinK]

I occasionally see the same tab groups, i.e., groups with the same names, appear in the tab bar. Specifically, this is the case with two tab groups, both called "Home Recording." I don't know why this is, but it shouldn't be possible to assign the same name more than once.

[MartinK]

PS: I just noticed that I have multiple duplicate tabs in both tab groups!

[Steeltent]

Having spent more time with the feature, I found a few other behaviors that I found unintuitive:

• adding tabs to a group via the context menu expands the group

This feels wrong and is annoying when you have to collapse the group right away again because you were doing something else.

• you can't add pinned tabs via the context menu

Why though? I get that you shouldn't be able to (accidentally) drag a pinned tab into a group, but I feel doing this via the context menu should override the pinning.

• you can't pin tab groups

I guess there might be reasons for this, but I was surprised I could not do it.

• you can't drag tabs into a collapsed group

That surprised me, and I think it should be possible to do this.

And to expand on my previous post:

I think the option "keep active tab of group visible" (still working on the name) could best be added to group's context menus, so the user can use this on a case-by-case basis. It would be nice to be able to change the default behavior as well, though, even if only via config flag. 

And finally, I just want to repeat my wish for the option to expand and collapse a group by double-clicking the active tab. I think this is such a fast, intuitive and elegant way to manipulate the groups, it would be shame not to have it. 

Other than that, I'm having a great time with this new feature. It's helping me stay more focused, and it's a nice feeling having the tab bar less cluttered and more organized. 

Edit: I knew I forgot something: 

I think we should be able to merge groups. Either by dragging a group onto another or via the context menu. 

[OG]

1. When dragging a group of tabs in the tab bar (whether stacked or unstacked), it would look easier on the eyes and faster to do if Firefox automatically stack all the tab groups including the one being dragged, meaning:
   
   1. I have 4 groups with 10 tabs each and maybe some ungrouped tabs, if I want to move group A from beginning to between Group C and Group D it would be faster if firefox stack opened groups including the one I am dragging so the user AKA ME could have less tabs on the tab bar to navigate and move Group A between Group C and Group D without visual clutter .
   2. Imagine stacking all groups, and then moving group a between Group C and Group D it is way easier
   3. I hope I explained it well.
2. Adding Custom icon and colors for groups and hopefully Workspaces.
3. settings for thickening the line under groups and for multi account containers
4. workspaces along Tab groups, for example, a workspace called shopping, with many tab groups for different things. I have a busy life, so I would research 40 minutes for a new TV, in a tab group called  BUY A TV  under he workspace Shopping and also have two other tab groups named Gift for Wife and Gift for Mistress. 
5. Pinned tab groups (Vivaldi Have this) but i have a different vision. When the user click on a pinned tab group, it would drop down a vertical (not horizontal) menu of tabs under that group, and when click it will view that tabs, it is more visually appealing and simplified than expanding a stack. also for pinned tab groups have the option for icon for that pinned group behind the favicon, for example:
   1. Pinned group named email: (gmail, outlook)
   2. pinned group named AI chat: (deepseek, chatgpt)
   3. pinned group named message: group (whatapp, messenger)
   4. Pinned group named organizers: (calendar, notes)
   5. It sounds advanced, but that's is the idea of Firefox, to be simple to start with but advanced when needed. and for me
6. Two Style of Tab grouping, (similar to Vivaldi)  1) Two level tab bars 2) accordion/stack (the way it is right now)

Mozilla you removed lots of control from tab developers, it is not possible for Firefox to be as customizable as before, hence you, Mozilla, must provide us, the users, more options like Vivaldi. PLEASE DON"T JUST COPY GOOGLE. BE DIFFERENT!

I spent 4 hours testing floorp, vivaldi, firefox nightly, zen and all to help out the community of firefox, but I lost faith honestly. And Vivaldi so far seems to be the best in term options.

[GNU2Linux]

I tested the new tab groups out, but so far it seems very limited in functionality and worse yet completely restricted to mouse actions. The Firefox team needs to study the old Panorama Tab Groups extension, which was very useful to not only group tabs and name groups, but to be able to use a custom keyboard shortcut to switch back and forth between the panorama view; and also to navigate between tab groups; and also to navigate between individual tabs of course as part of the standard functionality in Firefox. Using this extension one can bounce back and forth to surf between even dozens of tabs without touching the mouse.

[ABRAXAS]

This stupid tab group **bleep** is REALLY **bleep**ING ANNOYING!!!! Keeps making groups when I move tabs around. I am going to drop this browser after using it for 18+ years. This is a SERIOUS INCONVENIENCE!!!!!!

[Steeltent]

Instead of complaining, why not do a quick Google search how to turn off this feature or how to increase the time it takes to create a new group? 

I think this would've been quicker and actually gave you what you wanted. 

But because I'm in a good mood today, I'll give you the solution without you having to do the work yourself. No need to thank me either. 

Changing this flag in about:config to "false" turns off Tab Groups: 

browser.tabs.groups.enabled

Changing this value determines how long it takes to make a new group:

browser.tabs.dragDrop.createGroup.delayMS

1000 means 1 second and should be enough to even to most glacially moving person not to accidentally create a group. 

[groupedtabssuck]

So over a month since we got it and we have to go through config still to turn it off? Still no basic toggle in settings?

[Agentvirtuel]

Hello

Unless i have misunderstood.
Take a look at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1505257#answer-1724936
About Studies https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/shield

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Type about:studies into your address bar to see a list of your studies.
Click the Remove button next to the study you want to opt out of.

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By way of illustration https://www.youtube.com/embed/4wR6q5vodGU

[treetoon]

Overall it's looking good, but these are the changes I'd prefer:

- In vertical tabs the tab groups feel a bit visually off without a name, it's just a square

- When opening the bookmark/history/AI tool sidebar there should be an option to float to avoid reorganizing the webpage content as this can break things you're doing

- Preferably the ability to reorganize these sidebar tool buttons (bookmark/history/AI etc)

- If I click the tool "Tabs from other devices" and then collapse a list, then re-open the sidebar it isn't saved and opens again. Why?

- Firefox profiles add too much overhead to be used like workspaces (Simple Tab Groups, Opera etc). Creating a completely fresh Firefox install for shopping makes little sense, if I go shopping for a book, a TV, a table and a phone, do you expect me to create a new profile for each, setup all the settings and add-ons from scratch and log in everywhere for each? Then create 4 new Firefox accounts and attach them to each instance of profile to make sure they're synchronized? A fresh Firefox install for each space is too destructive, a new profile is something you might use to separate Personal and Work, but beyond that it seems to make little sense as a replacement for workspaces.

- Also, why can't you synchronize multiple profiles to one Firefox Account instead?

- You need workspaces that function similar to the Simple Tab Groups add-on or Opera's workspaces, it's too much clutter to keep all regular tab groups on the same screen space when they're not in use.

- The new tab groups should not show up everywhere when switching workspace in Simple Tab Groups. It makes the tab groups unusable. Although I'm guessing this is just not implemented yet. 

- Completely custom Firefox shortcuts would be neat.

- Additional shortcut for opening a tab next to the current tab and one at the end of the tab list.

- I wanna be able to use workspaces with a UI switcher. Like the alt+tab switcher on Windows but instead it shows a screen of your workspaces. And some visual indication of all your workspaces displayed constantly on-screen somewhere, like in Opera maybe. Or something along the lines of what @GNU2Linux suggested, panorama etc. 

[unecare]

The tab island feature in Opera is a real game changer. It groups tabs automatically when you click on a link in the parent tab. Then it automatically merges the tabs as a group under that parent tab. This is so useful. You never lose your way without any manual intervention. If you will create this kind of feature OK otherwise it won't be useful for its purpose. I don't think it might be difficult to develop this feature. If Chinese oper could do this, you already can do the same. 

[Huldar]

Recently learned about tab groups and they are cool

My 2 things that I would like to have are
1. I would like a setting for when you open a new tab (at least when pressing Ctrl+t, doesn't matter if it happens when you click the + icon) and you are currently viewing a tab in a tab group then the new tab should also open in the same tab group. This could be a setting.

2. I would like to be able to see the name of the tab group when it contains so many tabs that the tabs occupy the entirety of the top of the browser. Could just float at the far top left maybe?

Thanks, keep up the good work.

[treetoon]

There's a flag to open new tabs next to the current tab which will open that tab in the same group you're in. But the problem with it is that there's no way to open a new tab outside of a group then, since even when you're currently selected on the tab furthest to the right/bottom it will force that new tab to be added to the same group, so you have to then manually drag it outside. Other than that, I think I prefer this tab-behavior.

[Huldar]

Thanks, do you know what the flag is called? We're talking about a flag in the about:config right?

Fair point about the no way to open a new tab outside of the group then. Idk, but having it a setting would be nice.

[treetoon]

Yup. about:config.

browser.tabs.insertAfterCurrent

These are also useful:
browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent
browser.tabs.insertAfterCurrentExceptPinned

[Linnea]

I would very much like to see settings to change UI behavior such as disabling tab groups being created when moving a tab on top of another.
When moving a tab next to another one it's common that I accidentally create a tab group. Since I don't use this feature very often, I would prefer to have to right-click and select "Add tab(s) to New Group" so it doesn't happen unintentionally.

[treetoon]

Seems like they added a flag to set the amount of time before it reacts to create a group. You could simply increase this value to a super-high amount perhaps. Haven't tried it tho.

Browser.tabs.dragDrop.createGroup.delayMS

[Linnea]

Yes, I have changed this advanced setting since leaving that comment. There's also a flag to disable the feature.

Having these settings made available to non-advanced users is still something I'd like to see.

[Huldar]

One more thing that would be nice is if you could press ctrl+tab to cycle through tabs while all the tab groups are collapsed. And then if you cycle into a tab group it just uncollapses.

[alex_ok]

I have been waiting for this feature for years now, since I refuse to use any other browser, but the feature as implemented in Edge or others was so good. Thank you so much for implementing it!
Right now, my only complain is that (AFAIK) there is no way to change the group's button size. It only works if you press the rectangle-shaped button itself, leaving a space above and one below the button.

[alex_ok]

Addendum to clarify: I mean that the bounding box of the group button is way shorter along the vertical axis than the bounding box of tabs.

[Acil]

Will tab groups be brought to the mobile version of Firefox? Or at least a mobile compatible extension?

[okay_okay]

I'm really liking the tab groups with vertical tabs, but I'd like to be able to drag and drop a tab into a collapsed tab group. Right now I have to drag it next to the group, click to activate group, and then add it. Unless I'm missing something. 

[whoami730]

You can right click on the tab and add to the group. But yes drag and drop would be v useful here.

[vptwarrior]

Would love so that their is a setting to permanently turn it off even if I restart firefox as I am not fond of this feature.

[Agentvirtuel]

Hello

Take a look at
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1506304
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/help-shape-the-future-of-tab-groups-in-firefox/m-p/93640/...

[algharna]

Hello, is there anyway to sync groups tabs across devices? I want to access the same groups on my laptop that I have grouped on my desktop. Currently when you look at tabs from other devices, the list can be huge and looks very cluttered, then you have to organize them by groups on the separate device as well. Being able to sync across devices would help much with my workflow.
Thank you!