New in Nightly: Tab Notes (feedback wanted!)

[gharp]

Hi all, and happy 2026! We’re excited to kick off the year with a new feature in Nightly: tab notes, which we have designed to help you pick up where you left off on the web. As we continue to develop this feature, we’d love your feedback.

A tab note is a simple way to write yourself a note about a web page. These notes can be reminders, to-do items, quick thoughts, longer reflections – anything you want to capture, up to 1,000 characters. A note is indicated by a new icon (yes, it looks like a sticky note) and remains associated with the web page unless you delete it. If you close a tab and later reopen it, the tab note will appear again.

What do you think of this concept? In what scenarios can you see yourself using tab notes? Go ahead and give them a try, kick the tires, and tell us what works well and what we can improve. This is an early experiment, and we’re still making daily improvements. For example, we’re actively working on persistence –ensuring that tab notes remain associated with websites even as those sites modify their URLs.

Here’s a quick video showing tab notes in action: https://mozilla.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=4447686c-5877-43f7-bf4b-b3e10006b7d1 

A few other key points to know:

• For anyone attending FOSDEM this coming weekend (Jan 31 & Feb 1), please stop by our booth to see a tab notes demo and chat with our team.
• We’re planning to bring tab notes to Firefox Labs in the 149 release (late March).
• Want to dig in even further? Check out our foxfooding document, which covers design goals, known limitations, and open questions 

Thanks, as always, for your input!

[Mannshoch]

I really like the idea! I did not test it but it is something i wayt for a long time.

There is one important point I would like to see. Tasks:

• Add posibility to create a task note
• Have an overall Dashboard with a list of all tasks.
• Task-Dashboard looks like a kanban board
• If Thunderbird is set up, allow to connect a calendar and store tasks within.

If a Thunderbird ia

[myspace]

I like it. This would be even better if I could send a tab or tabs to someone else with a tab note. 

[Mannshoch]

With a shared calendar this feature would be as designed.

I do not have experience with shared tasks beyond shared Calendar.

I could see some pros, for families so that they could notify some information e.g. on shiping sites, about how to behave if you need something or on management pages for services you use like community or other public services.

Does task works similar to meeting invetations which are sent by Mail?

[bobac]

I have been using Firefox for years and been happy. However, I have been trying to use the Tab Group feature and it's terrible.  Probably 6 - 8 times I have consulted the instructions and tried set up groups but it's messy and confusing. As a result, I am changing to a different browser with better and easier organization of work space. 

[gharp]

@bobac thanks for sharing -- and we are sorry that you have found Tab Groups messy and confusing. We would love to hear your perspective on how we can improve them. Feel free to share your thoughts in this discussion if you're able to.

[s_hentzschel]

I really like the idea of tab notes! But there is one thing I find very irritating. The feature is labeled as tab notes, but in fact they are URL notes. As soon as the URL changes, the note disappears.

I would like the notes to actually belong to the tab, which makes much more sense to me because the URL can change relatively easily, especially when navigating within the tab. I would argue that it is even very likely that you will actively work with a tab on which you take notes, which in many cases inevitably results in the URL changing — but that does not mean that the note is no longer relevant to the tab.

Apart from that, I also see a kind of privacy issue: If the tab note simply disappears, it is quickly forgotten. If the URL is called up again later and then someone is with you, a private note may be revealed that has been forgotten. To mitigate this, it would at least require an overview of all tab notes.