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!

[hoggys2much1]

No thank you to your links.

I cannot believe how many here want these pathetic tab groups.

This is the way Firefox should look like. Tabs at the top in plain view where you can see them not grouped one behind the other where you can't see anything.

Oh and yes I still have my Firefox looking like Firefox 3 as that was the best version.

[greyguy]

I'm an IT nerd/power user who have been using Firefox for 30+ years. I love the way Firefox has developed, and that they finally (what took you so long!?) added a "pathetic" tab groups feature. The feature is just not fully done yet. 😊 

It's really good that tab groups can be disabled via about:config, but adding an easy option in the GUI would be even better. Then users like @hoggys2much1, who aren't super-excited about it (and who can't understand why anyone else would be), could easily skip it and wouldn't need to waste their time posting here. 😀

___________
"It's the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle

[falolaf]

To be fair regarding "finally (what took you so long!?)", Panorama was released in 2010, about 15 years ago.

Now I would not mind having a mix of Panorama and tab groups. That would be something. Or perhaps that would be pathetic?

[greyguy]

I have encountered some buggy behavior with the new (hotly awaited!) Tab Groups feature. When opening/closing sessions with tab groups, there suddenly appears duplicate groups and duplicate tabs. Some kind of corruption seems to be occurring...

EDIT: Especially the "List all tabs" menu (to the right of all tabs) seems to behave very weirdly with tab groups after a while. It gets slow, unresponsive, shows duplicates etc...

I'm on Firefox v138.0.4 on Windows 10. The only related add-in I'm using is Mozilla's own Facebook Container.

[falolaf]

I have seen this too. Perhaps related to:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1963522

[mjw59]

I can confirm this also on Windows 10 (using Firefox v139) when first using Tab Groups, but I haven't spent enough time with it on Windows 10 to reproduce. So far it hasn't occurred on Linux Mint (Dual boot). It's a great feature though and is aiding my personal work flow no end.

[Talidara]

One thing that could make or break tab groups for me is the ability to automatically group on more than one domain, and to easily edit which domains are included. For example, I might decide to add multiple social media domains to one group, and then all facebook and instagram links should create new pages in the same tab_group. 

It would be perfect if it could be done with regex rather than enforcing actual domains. I have had multiple instances where one domain had content for two different things (for example I might want somewebsite/videos/* to be grouped with youtube, but not somewebsite/articles/* ). That could easily be solved by allowing us to specify with regex what pattern the url should match. 

With containers, I've made the mistake of clicking the 'always open tabs in this container' for a website without realising that not all their content fits that container, and found it almost impossible to get rid of that automatic association. That alone was enough for me to abandon them completely, so for me it is absolutely essential that automatic grouping rules are easy to find back and easy to edit.

So it would be great if you could just right click on the group and next to the name and colour see a button for 'automatically add tabs" and if that is selected, a simple list of domains or regex patterns used for automatic grouping that you can remove, edit or add to.

Additionally, if you had a group set to add automatically, and you drag a tab into it that doesn't match any current patterns, it should suggest: do you want to add this to the list?, and then give the option to add either the entire domain or a custom regex based on that url. I could imagine this with buttons, or just with a prefilled field with just the bare domain but that can be edited to be more specific before clicking 'add'.

I really like the other suggestions about the collapsed tab groups, and I would furthermore really like the option to add custom icons for each group. I feel that with containers the options are very limited and based mostly on the idea that people will use the containers to separate shopping from work from personal. I personally would use groups a lot more to differentiate projects. I would love a ! or star, or more general icons.

One more thing I noticed while playing around: Right now, pinning tabs removes them from the group. I don't know how that would interact with any automatic grouping rules. I don't really know if I'd prefer for pinned tabs to be excluded from grouping or for there to be separate pinned tabs within each group, but maybe others have a strong opinion.

[ostfriese4]

I would like if it would be possible to add groups to other groups. Something like Subgroups.

[__ds]

It could do with two-level tab groups (effectively a second tab bar for the current group, much as Vivaldi does). I'd prefer that over the current accordion approach.

(I tried doing this via dev tools, but quickly concluded that the <tab-group> element needs an additional <hbox> to contain the <tab>s. With that, I think that it'd be implementable via CSS.)

[rwaweber]

I often find myself using multiple devices logged into the same firefox account, which right now is helpful for tab sync. Recently, I've started using tab groups and its been a big productivity boost!

Unfortunately, I've noticed that tab groups aren't synchronize through FF Sync. It would be great if they were!

[rwaweber]

Worth noting that without synchronized tab groups, I've resorted to saving groups of tabs into their own folders in my bookmarks, which at least lets me save and reopen groups of tabs at once. Unfortunately, there's a couple manual steps to do that, and  I think a feature like this could really improve upon that style of workflow!

[Lovelymafia]

>  resorted to saving groups of tabs into their own folders in my bookmarks, ... . Unfortunately, there's a couple manual steps to do that,

This might help a bit 

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/open-bookmarks-in-tabgroup/ 

[kg13]

I tried this feature and don't like it. Too often when re-ordering tabs I create groups by accident. I don't appreciate that there is no proper option in the settings to turn this off. I had to Google "turn off tab groups in firefox" and find a Reddit thread to figure out I had to turn this off in about:config. Generally speaking, my tabs are transitory. I'm not building a family out of tabs; I don't need to color them or name them. If you're gonna keep developing this feature, please add an easy way to find the option to turn this off in the settings. Thank you!

[Coolwaters]

I like the feature a lot, but I agree it should be a lot easier to turn tab grouping off.

[Endless]

Please add mobile support. Managing 30-80 tabs on a mobile device without grouping isn't great, but I don't really even use a computer these days, everything is on my phone.

[Scott40]

I love tab Groups and I find the implementation clean and straightforward. I can save my groups but the option to load them is missing from the tab management drop down menu. Once I close Firefox and reopen I cannot load my groups.

Firefox 139.0

[Enginerd]

Hi Scott, I'm assuming that the "Tab management drop down menu" is the same menu that allows you to search through your open tabs and see what tabs are on your other devices.  That's exactly where I can find my "saved" tab groups.

Just out of curiosity, if you close a group by right clicking it and choosing "Save and close group", are you still not seeing the group under that menu?

[pixo]

I would love to have the option to sync an entire group tab across devices, not tabs, an entire group tab that i already gave a name and a color.

Going even deep into that, the mobile app support for group tabs is also welcome, just like being able to sync an GROUP between desktops, sync with mobile devices would be fire.

Also this options should have it on check box on the configuration tab -> Synchronization.

[mkerr23]

Please add an option to completely hide the sidebar when "Expand sidebar on hover" is selected. Currently, the sidebar minimizes to a narrow vertical strip, which is not ideal in many use cases.

[giorov]

You should implement a freeze group function so that you don't get a bunch of videos playing at once when moving all your Youtube tabs into a group.

[giorov]

Suggestions:

Let us pin tab groups to the beginning or end of the tabs stack.

Let us add tab to group without the tab group opening.

[jplonjers]

I haven't figured out how to leave a thank you to the team about tab groups.  I have been using them for a couple of weeks and they make my life so much easier.  Managing large collections of tabs was such a pain with regular tabs.  Now have a couple of collections of tabs and it all just works.  Thanks for that.

[ddkz]

I don't know if it has been mentioned here but I would love to be able to have groups within groups so that for instance within a group for a trip I could have a separate subgroup for restraunt ideas and another subgroup for sight seeing ideas.

Or an alternative example would be in a coding projects group I have a subgroup for each project and subsubgroups for problems I'm working on in each coding project.

I do this kind of thing with tree style tabs all the time. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/

It would be also cool to be able to have a "root/first" tab of a group be a "note" tab that allows me to jot down any notes I have going for a project that's directly integrated into the browser. And shareable to other people. Preferably including an overview of the subtabs and subgroups in the main window with notes about the project I'm working on (preferably with markdown support).

It would also be cool if instead of closing tabs I could check them of as "complete or archived" so they are unloaded but still easily accessible. Alternatively each closed tab could be marked as having been formally part of that group/subgroup so they are easier to find in the history.

[Xenu007]

Okay, I found a bug: If I have an existing tab in front of series of tab groups (34, for me) and I right click on that single tab and select "New Tab to Right", it doesn't open that new tab immediately to the right of the tab I clicked on (and to the left of the string of tab groups), but opens the new tab at the very end of the list of tab group tabs, far to the right. Annoying.

[Xenu007]

Okay, here's a feature request. When I right click on a tab group I get the option to "Move group to new window". Please add the same option to move to a private window.

[egghead]

Please add tab groups to mobile Firefox! It's too easy to lose track of tabs. Save me from myself!!

[mjw59]

I create many tab groups from bookmark folders. Currently, I have to 'Open all bookmarks', create a tab group from one bookmark and then add the others to it - one by one. Having an option in the right click context menu to 'Add all to tab group' or 'Add all to new tab group' would be a real time saver. Similarly, an option to 'Add to tab group' for a single bookmark (which would open a selection box to choose the target group) would be very handy.

[Lovelymafia]

> right click context menu to 'Add all to tab group' or 'Add all to new tab group'

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/open-bookmarks-in-tabgroup/ 

[mjw59]

I'll take a look at it. Meantime, one of your other pointers...

"you can drag & drop any link into a group"

...works for me. Thanks for the heads up.

[natemeier]

I would love to be able to set up automatic tab groups for my container tabs. I use container tabs extensively, and it would be great if I could configure my container tabs be placed into corresponding tab groups automatically.

E.g., I have a rule that opens all reddit.com addresses in a "Personal" container tab. I would like to see that tab nested under a Tab Group called "Personal". 

I can see situations where I wouldn't want this to happen, but it's what I want >99% of the time.

[Lovelymafia]

not automatic, but maybe it helps a bit

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/group-same-container-tabs 

[Rhialto]

Hoarding Tabs and now Tab Groups? Keep the count with tabStats. With Tab Groups finally in Firefox, I moved everything from Chrome to Firefox and I was looking for a Tab counter but could not find any to also include Tab Groups so I went back into programming (after so many years) to make my own. I liked every minute of this. I won't call myself a full fledged programmer though, it was just fun to have a look at it again and now with the help of AI you can get tips why this error and so on.

If my Addon is useful to you and you like it, please rate it. Thanks!

[patrat0102]

I really like the tab groups + vertical tab configuration. I have noticed that it's a little tricky to reliably drag a tab into the bottom of an existing group. Since I almost always want to preserve the top-down order of the tabs when dragging them into a group, it would be nice to be able to drag each tab right into the bottom of the group. It's not really an issue when I just need to add one or two new tabs into an existing group. If it takes me two tries, it's still relatively fast. But when I have a stack of 10 or so un-grouped tabs, and want to group them all together in the existing order, it's a little frustrating. 

When you're in the more typical, horizontal tab configuration, this is only an issue once the width of each tab drops to about 2cm or less. But it still gets tough to manually drag them into a specific spot in the group. 

I've had a few very sketchy ideas about how this could be improved. 

1. I think something like a "snap-to-grid" style feature could make it a bit easier to drag tabs onto the end of a group. It's the sort of thing you find in most audio or video editing software to make it possible to place two segments end-to-end without overlap or empty space. Obviously you can't accidentally leave empty space or overlap the tabs, but overlap would be placing the tab one place further inside the group than you want, and if you don't drag it in far enough, it doesn't always join the group. 

2. Add a tab/button in the "Manage Tab Group" pop-up menu that lets you reorder the tabs more easily, but the tab bar mechanics remain the same outside that menu. This would avoid the potential for tabs to get "stuck" when dragging from one end to the other, or for other janky behavior when moving tabs around, which could be harder to avoid when users have a lot of tabs and a snap-to-grid or sticky feature.

3. Add a "create group" mode, where the tabs become select-able, so you can choose exactly which tabs you want to be in the group before they're lumped together. I'm basically imaging the way you can enter a discrete "edit-app-order" mode in Android or iOS. At least in Android, you can still move apps into and out of folders without entering that mode. But it's far easier to move a bunch of apps into and out of folders and between pages when you're in that mode. 

4. I'll just change my tab grouping habits. It's a new feature, so it's possible I'm uniquely bad at managing the tab groups, and I just need to spend a few more seconds thinking about the right way to do it. I can so comfortable inside a given platform's UIX that when I try to use a different platform, it feels clunky and unintuitive. It's usually just me, haha. 

[Milan]

I'd like to highlight these feature requests:
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/pin-tab-groups/idi-p/94810
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/pin-tabs-inside-a-tab-group/idi-p/95228

Since I have several tabs opened all the time, I love those features helping me to minify/organize my tabs to spare some space. Combining the compact size of pinned tabs with tab groups would be dope!

[Jon]

@Milan Thanks for highlighting these! The team is monitoring this discussion...and I've also surfaced those two ideas for some more visibility 🙌

[toraxmalu]

Okay - it is nice to have back the grouping and even in a better manner than it was availible years ago. but why i can’t sync them with mobile FF nor with other desktop devices‽ not helpful…

[kto]

Hi!

I'd like the tab groups to be persistent, ie. they should be CRUD-compatible. If I accidentally close the last tab in a group, I lose the whole group and have to recreate it. Thanks a lot, this is a great feature.

[ffuser196878647]

Create a group, rename the group, right click the name then choose "Save and close group". Then use the down chevron menu to select the group to open it. The group opens but the tabs are all out of order, seemingly random. I have to go through and re-order the tabs how I want them every time I restore a tab group. Firefox 139.0.4 (64-bit) on Windows.

[kto]

Thanks!

Should be autosaved IMO, since that would be better UX. 

[brandonhao]

I personally disabled tab grouping because I did not like the implementation but am not opposed to the idea. Here are my issues:

• I think groups form too easily when moving tabs, most of the times that I have created tab groups were by accident and I did not want to. I think this got better over time but I still found myself accidentally creating groups
• When I selected "Delete Group" in the "Manage tab group" menu, I did not expect it to also close all tabs in the group, I thought that it would behave the way "Ungroup tabs" does. Obviously its good to have the two functionalities, but the label "Delete Group" doesn't imply to me that the tabs will be closed
• I expected when initially creating the group, that if I clicked away from the "Create tab group" menu, it would be as if I selected "Cancel", i.e. that the tab group would not be created. Instead it behaves as if I had clicked "Done". I think bookmarks used to behave this way too, where if you did not click "Save" the bookmark would be discarded.
• I feel like the option to enable or change these behaviours should be present in the "Settings" menu rather than limited to about:config