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!

[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

[ffuser196878647]

I'm not a fan of the down chevron to find the groups. Took me a while to find that. Funnily if you ignore the grouping the behavior of the browser isn't that much different from without grouping, if you ignore it then it's just a color line under the page tab titles. I'd like a feature to compress the tab title display. I.e. reduce every tab to just an icon then have a drop down to select which one. That way I can group and mostly forget because the tabs aren't taking up the screen.

[makkus]

Will we be able to sync Tab Groups across devices?

[Rhialto]

Repairing firefox will bring back Tabs but not Tab Groups! Please fix ASAP!

[Vermithion]

Would love to be able to choose as many colors as I'd like for different tab groups. For example, color picking from a color wheel or something similar would be nice.

[voyage200]

I closed my tabs today, thinking that Tab Groups were saved in the cloud like in Chrome, but Firefox encountered issues when restoring my browsing session. Since I use Tab Groups to organize my work, I lost my progress and now have to slowly rebuild my three Tab Groups from the history, which is particularly troublesome.

I hope that, in addition to the current Firefox cloud services, multi-device cloud synchronization for Tab Groups ( similar to Google Chrome's )can be added.

[Bushibot]

For the love of god, add TAB GROUP data to CLOUD sync. Right now there is no way to move out of nightly with your groups! This is so bad, group are a critical work flow item they have to be saved and protected and managed across all modern FF versions!

[Disearned]

This might be something small, but when I close a tab group, even when I'm using a tab inside that group, it brings me either to another tab group that's open or opens a new tab if there's no other tabs to go to. It isn't the worst but I would like to sometimes have the groups closed while using a tab inside that group, not have it open the entire time. Minimizes the chance for me to get distracted from another tab inside that group if I need to focus.

All the other browsers I've used had that and it was nice, always let me keep things minimal and clean. Not sure if anyone else talked about this but it would be a great feature. Opening a new tab when all groups are closed doesn't make sense in my opinion, and it would be a great quality-of-life feature to allow people to stay on a tab when they close the group they're currently using.

Like I said, it's probably small, but it's something I got used to and would like to have in Firefox, as I love the browser.

[noor101]

I’d love to see these features added as well! I used Vivaldi Browser briefly a while back, and ever since then, I’ve wished that tab stacking was available in other browsers too. It’s such a useful way to stay organized.

[Kipbot]

I absolutely love this feature and want to encourage it.  Currently, I work on a Linux machine and a Macbook, but the tab groups don't show up on Linux.  When this is out of beta/testing phases, I'm in!

[toraxmalu]

It doesn’t show from start – simply open 2 tabs and drag one over the other. Had the same "trouble" on Termux with X11 and the desktop-FF. – Cheers!
And check the used FF-version. current version is 140.x. maybe your distribution is not using the LTS-version instead of the current version.

[pslee]

Hi,

We we click the "List all tabs" button (next to "Open a new tab" button), we can see that under "Recent tab groups" section, there are four recent tab groups being listed, and right under them, there is a "Show all" for us to click to get handles to all tab groups.

Can we have an option to always sort all those handles in alphanumeric order? That would make jumping to our desired tab group much easier.

Kindly consider.

Regards,

Lee

[blueana]

Great feature! I would love to be able to use the tab groups in the Homepage Settings. Currently it does not allow it.

[FirefoxAnon]

I've been using this feature for a bit now with vertical tabs, and I hate how easy it is to accidentally group tabs. I try to move a tab directly between two others, and it ends up grouping with the tab above, and this happens A LOT. Figuring out how to fix/ungroup them quickly isn't very intuitive, and early on I'd end up closing the grouped tabs by accident. I'd like the ability to set middle-click to ungroup tabs instead of delete all.

Also, dragging a tab to the end of a group isn't easily doable and I find myself having to either 1. move it to the 2nd-to-last position and shift the last tab above it, or 2. remove the tab from the group and add it back in. Both options take one more step than I want it to, when I just want to quickly organize things.

Minimizing a group while looking at a tab inside should keep the tab loaded instead of jumping to a different tab outside of the group.

[GDenis81]

Hi,

I love the new Tab Groups features. Working with the Cloud was becoming totally inefficient, until now. I have a few improvement requests:

• Would like to be able to Close a group without saving it. This way if I browsed on one of the tab during my work, my Group is not affected.
• Inversely, I also would to be able to save the group without closing it. So I can add a tab to the group, save for future Group use, and continue working. Now I have to close-save it, then reopen it
• In the bookmark panel, I would suggest to change the "Recent tab group" to "Tab group" and ensure that all saved Groups are there. This naming kind of make me think there are Groups hidden somewhere...

Please continue upgrading the Tab Groups, this is a game changer in my work !

Greg

[Bushibot]

It's incredible frustrating that there is still not way to really restore and backup and sync tab groups. 

All of mine just disappeared on a nightly update, possible due to having a private tab open, I really don't know.

I had to spend a couple hours screwing around figuring out how to find a restore and then writing a script to continuously backup the backup files because holly cow is frustrating to loose tab groupings. Terrible user experience.
Tab groups are like folder book marks loosing them with no good recovery method is like looking the book mark/Tabs them selves. It's a absolute train wreck and productivity stopper.
if you guys want the feature taken seriously then you MUST treat the data seriously.

If I'm using edge not only can I easily restore all my tabs with a key shortcut but I can restore from or to other machines.

[ayu]

Something like the sideberry extension integrated into Firefox would be awesome. They are able to take snapshots of the tabs and tab groups at any interval (5mins, daily, weekly etc) and easily restore specific tabs or an entire window with the click of a button. And it only takes a few MB of data to save hundreds of snapshots. It makes it so much easier to restore past tabs

[okay_okay]

easily share tab groups! with others (friends, family...) and also between my different profiles

[Jon]

For those interested, a similar request can be found here: Tab groups that can be shared 

[dchalyi]

Hi guys, please add this feature: Automatically collapse the currently open tab group when switching to another closed group!

And it's even better to leave only the last used tab active in the old group when switching to a new group!

[toraxmalu]

Hell NO! Or better: Make the behaviour configurable … but for my workflow it would be very annoying, if the group is always collapsing on a switch.

[itsdk]

I’ve found a bug or oversight in Tab Groups now that they’re released. When you use ctrl+t relax actively in a tab group, it should add it to that tab group, but instead just opens a new tab in no group.

[Milan]

```
browser.tabs.insertAfterCurrent
browser.tabs.insertAfterCurrentExceptPinned
```
Taking these configuration keys into account, Tab Groups may need to have distinct behavior.

[Aeolium]

I love this additions, thank you (and your team) so much for adding it. 

My suggestion: Can we have some way to keep the tab groups persistent across sessions. 

Recently I was doing some debugging with my touchpad and mouse, and how it interacts with firefox. I was repeatedly opening, closing and restarting firefox during this process. Much to my dismay by time I got back into my regular work flow, the tab groups had long gone from the history. 

So I'd like either an option to save them, or better yet another option to open a tab group automatically (but still condensed) with each new session. 

Thanks - TP

[toraxmalu]

I observed that is, because the groups are saved at first in recovery.jsonlz4 - and that is not always written in an instant after changes are given. and if the firefox is closed, it is transferred to session.jsonlz4.

[ifer]

Am loving tab groups so far. However, I do have a few requests/suggestions.

1: when sending a tab to a group, you can only send it to an already-open group. However, with the saved tab groups it would be even better if you could send a tab to an inactive group. This may involve choosing whether to open the group the tab is inserted in or to effectively close the tab.

2: If you reopen a window that had tab groups, especially with a tab or session manager, it seems to mean that you now have that group both in the saved (closed) group location and in the open (window) location. This doubles your tabs, and on many uses can lead to you needing to prune your groups and tabs often. However, if you do not reopen the session then you lose ungrouped tabs.

3: duplicate groups. If you forget you have a group for a subject and start a new one, it can be a pain.

For all these problems, I suggest: merge tab groups. If a tab has a duplicate title, ask to merge. If a group is identical to an already existing one, ask to merge. If a session closes and it has groups, have a toggle to  either save the groups and open only the ungrouped tabs next time, or open the groups too but not list a double in the saved groups area.

4: while you can add tabs to groups alphabetically, by clicking "r" until it hilights "Reading", you cannot currently open saved groups or navigate to existing groups this way.

5: if navigating tab groups alphabetically, "New Group" seems to take priority for G. This can be unexpected, when you would expect to get "Gaming", etc. Please underline/bold the G in group (and any other hotkeys in menus [and let us add our own keymaps already plz!]) and let a second "g" cycle through groups again. Else make + the new group hotkey, so that the alphanumeric ones can be exclusively for nomenclature. + is less likely to be needed for naming.

[ifer]

Oh, and it seems that tabs in groups save the containers. That's good, and when removing duplicate tabs/groups should be taken into account - you want to keep one in each container it is open in.

[eithk]

I just found and really like the idea of tab groups. one major issue for me is their configuration is apparently stored in history? I feel like it would be better to save them somewhere more persistent. If we're just saving a name and some URLs, I don't see why it'd be necessary or appropriate to store in history at all. I cannot use tab groups to their full extent if I have "clear history when Firefox closes" enabled... if I want to use tab groups I essentially have to manage history manually, carefully ensuring that I never erase anything in a tab group; or just leave all history and be reminded of every dumb thing I google every time I start typing in the URL bar.

My other suggestion besides storing tab groups outside of history(or whatever non-persistent space they're being stored in) is to allow tab groups to be pinned; I often keep the same few websites pinned and it'd be nice to be able to open & pin them as a group.

[eithk]

Another thought that would work for my kind of use case would be an option to right click a bookmarks folder and open as a tab group.

[Rhialto]

Hoarding Tabs and now Tab Groups? Keep the count with tabStats.

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

[Giovanni_A]

Hello Devin,

since one week or so I'm using the "TAB"-Tool and it's improving the usability for me.
What I'm missing is the possibility to "Save the Tab" without closing it.

An additional feature would be not only to choose a color for the Tab, but to assign eq the logo of the homepage, which appears left of the tab's description.

That's for now - have a nice day !   Giovanni ( I'm from Austria, my real name is Johannes/Hannes ... John in English and Giovanni in Italian, a very expressionable language )

I'm using 141.0.3 (64-Bit) and have Downloaded the Beta-version to use it simultaneously

[MillerTimeCars]

I love tab groups, but how about a way to pin tabs in a group to reduce the used real estate? Additionally, my Tab Groups need to be redone after a system restart.