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.

[s_hentzschel]

Another thing I just noticed: I find it irritating that the note is saved with Enter when the text field is focused. I actually expected a line break because the field is larger than a simple text field and even adjust dynamically in height. This means that the expectation is more like a text area, where I would start a new line.

[lackey]

Shift+Enter?

[s_hentzschel]

I am aware of this shortcut, that's not the point. It's about expectations. It feels like a textarea, therefore it should behave like a textarea. Beyond that, I am not sure if the majority of the users know this shortcut.

[n9]

Awesome feature, this'll keep me from wondering why I left a tab open. I think it can be improved on accessibility other than hovering over tabs:

• When searching for tabs in addressbar suggest tabs with notes containing searchterm
• Make notes visible in firefox view
• New tab widget to display tabs with notes, grouped by windows/groups
• No idea if this already works but please let extensions view and modify notes

[okay_okay]

I'm really liking this feature! It's a nice reminder to return to the tab for a specific reason. 

[n9]

Allow replacing title with tab notes and allow extensions to make these changes! Many tabs I open are just called "sdfghuadjgsfah.pdf" so let me have notes "Lecture notes CM102" and display that as title. Allow bookmarking also to pull "Lecture notes CM102" as title. Especially good idea since notes are already being developed to survive between sessions and so no need to duplicate this work to have another title changing mechanism.

If extensions could do the same:

• arxiv-utils will be able to set title to ".pdf" pages without having to open the pdf in it's own internal pdf.js just because it doesn't have access to embedded pdf sites. Very clunky to deal with that.
• extensions that support renaming tabs internally like Sideberry will be able to do that in a standard way

[gharp]

@n9 thanks for the suggestion. See also the discussion of renaming tabs here. Your idea of integrating this functionality with tab notes is interesting for us to consider.

[gharp]

An update about Tab Notes in Nightly: on February 25th, we turned the feature off by default in Nightly and relauched it in Nightly Firefox Labs. If you used tab notes in Nightly prior to this change, you will need to update to the latest Nightly, then navigate to Firefox Settings > Firefox Labs (about:preferences#experimental), and turn the tab notes on in Labs. Once you do this, your previous notes will reappear intact.

[Sav22999]

Hi! An addon which permits to save notes already exist (and it’s “Firefox recommended” too) since 2001: Notefox!

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/websites-notes/

it’s open-source and totally free.

Why, instead to improve together that addon, are you developing a totally new one?

[miki64]

Good morning, gharp.

I read your news today with astonishment; it should make us happy about such an important feature, but instead it leaves me very, very perplexed.

As early as March 11, 2021, in Italy, we had already designed and developed a fantastic extension that allows you to save text notes on a Firefox tab.  Here is the link to verify what I’m saying (I hope this webpage allows links)

The add-on created by the Italian developer is called Notefox and is available for download from AMO: https://addons.mozilla.org/it/firefox/addon/websites-notes/

It’s even an extension with the “Recommended” badge, used by as many as 12,847 users, available also for Firefox on Android, and with a high rating of 4.4 stars.

Please forgive my question, without any intention to stir up controversy: but now, what will become of an excellent extension like Notefox—which is, in any case, superior to Tab Notes?

This is certainly not the right way to encourage developers to spend their time advancing Firefox if they then suddenly find themselves facing “in-house competition.”

I look forward to your response. Best regards.

[gharp]

@miki64 thanks for raising this. You're absolutely right that Notefox is a popular add-on and deserves its "Recommended" status.
What we're exploring with Tab Notes is a browser-native way for users to capture notes, integrated directly into tabs, hover previews, and menus. On the other hand, it lacks many of the robust features that Notefox offers. Tab Notes is still an early experiment in Firefox Labs, and the community’s feedback helps us shape where it goes next.
We don’t see Tab Notes as a replacement for extensions like Notefox. Add-ons can offer richer features, flexibility, and broader platform support, and we believe there is room for both approaches. More broadly, Firefox has often taken inspiration from popular extension ideas and explored built-in versions alongside them (Tab Groups is another example). We certainly hope that you will continue developing Notefox!

[troysjanda]

So I have then enabled but I find it useless as once you set a note and the sticky shows up on the tab you can view said not without having to edit it. Should be displayed via a mouse hover. unless i am missing a setting. but if I cant see the note what's the point should not have to right click and edit to see the existing note.

[DanielT]

According to Tab Notes information, notes are stored locally. There doesn't appear to be a way to manage notes, especially for abandoned tabs.

For example, I opened a random webpage to test Tab Notes, then dismissed it without removing the note. By preference, I do not use browser History. After closing Firefox, I cannot recall the webpage I opened. According to Tab Notes information, the note will remain in local storage.

[gharp]

Hey @DanielT, thanks -- yes, we've heard this from a number of people and will explore it after we've gotten more feedback through the current Firefox Labs release of Tab Notes. Feel free to suggest this as a new Idea on Connect so that others can upvote it.

[Jon]

Thanks all for the lively discussion! With the feature now live in Firefox Labs, we have kicked off a new feedback thread here on Connect and will close this one out. Please join us here: 

Tab Notes going live in Firefox Labs - please share your feedback 

Hope to see ya there 🙌