Seeking your feedback on Tab Groups

[gharp]

Hi all – I’m Gabriel, on the Firefox team.

We launched launched Tag Groups half a year ago, and since then we have introduced a number of improvements based on your feedback. You can read more in our starting guide (my personal favorite: previewing tab group contents by hovering). Now that the feature has been in your hands for a while, we would welcome your input on what comes next! 

As we explore future enhancements, we are especially interested to hear your perspective on two areas: 

• Improving the usefulness of saved tab groups. How are you using saved tab groups? What benefits do they bring to your workflow compared to bookmarks (and bookmark folders)? How can we improve the experience? For example, we know there is a strong interest in being able to sync tab groups.
• Workspaces. Some of you have requested a way to separate contexts by creating workspaces – for instance, sets of tabs and tab groups that are entirely isolated from each other, yet remain available within a single browser window. We are eager to learn more about your workspace use cases and where context separation via window management, profiles, and/or containers doesn’t meet your workflow needs. And is collaboration with others an important feature of workspaces for you? 

Thanks in advance!

[DazedNConfused]

I would like to be able to pin them. As well as a toggle option for the following behaviour:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1530303

Everything else is perfect.

[gharp]

Thanks @DazedNConfused. Pinning tab groups makes sense. For the other behavior you mentioned ("Is it possible to automatically collapse a group after switching to another group?"), are you essentially asking for a setting that would keep only one tab group open at a time? When that setting is enabled, tab groups would collapse automatically when you open or navigate to a different tab group. Is that right?

[DazedNConfused]

Yes! You understood it perfectly, should I expect this kind of addition in the next update?

[gharp]

Thanks for confirming, @DazedNConfused . We are gathering feedback such as this over the coming weeks as we plan for improvements to make in 2026. In short: I wouldn't expect this change in the next update, but we will be sure to share more details as we move forward with changes. 

[yermulnik]

Plus one to tab groups pinning 👍

[JTelcontar]

Another plus 1 for tab group pinning! Tab groups aren't at all useful for me until I can pin haha.

[Jon]

Thanks! Pinning tab groups has been a popular request here on Connect and even has its own post:

Pin Tab Groups (70+ votes currently)

Feel free to upvote and add any more insights there 🙌

[ADragon]

I am confused, is "Save and close group" functionally the same?

[gharp]

@ADragon , are you asking whether "save and close group" is the same functionality as pinning tab groups?

Pinning a tab group would fix its position in the tab strip (similar to pinned tabs), whereas "save and close group" closes the group (and the tabs in it), but lets you open the group later from the "list all tabs menu".

[johemius]

This is a post I made on the forum about 6 months ago (https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/keyboard-shortcut-to-open-a-new-adjacent-tab-within-group/idi-p...), but I'd still love to see this feature added to Firefox, preferably as an additional, customizable keyboard shortcut.

---

In light of the recently-added tab groups feature, one feature which I think would be really welcome would be a keyboard shortcut (similar to Ctrl + T) which opens a new tab directly to the right of the current tab, in the same group as the currently-active tab.

Before I switched from Chrome to Firefox, I was an avid user of the "New Adjacent Tab" extension, which implemented this behaviour. There is a similar add-on for Firefox ("Open Adjacent New Tab") but it does not perfectly replicate the behaviour of the Chrome extension when the currently-selected tab is the rightmost tab in its group. I think this would be a helpful keyboard shortcut to have in Firefox for easier tab management, particularly for creating and managing tabs within groups.

[gharp]

@johemius thanks for raising this again here. I am curious to know: do you always want to open new tabs adjacent to the current one, or are there times when you want the new tab to open at the end of the tab strip? 
I ask because we could also explore an easily accessible setting to specify where new tabs open by default. (This can currently be changed in about:configbrowser.tabs.insertAfterCurrent and browser.tabs.insertAfterCurrentExceptPinned, but that isn't easy for people to find.) On the other hand, I see the value of having the keyboard shortcuts especially if you like to choose different new-tab behaviors at different times.

[johemius]

I personally would want a separate feature to open new tabs adjacent to the current one which does not require the tabs.insertAfterCurrent settings from the config.

Based on the way I like to use tab groups, I find it sometimes useful to open an additional tab within the group (particularly if I'm interested in going back to that tab later) but not 100% of the time. I currently do have the insertAfterCurrent feature enabled, but I do miss having the flexibility to open a tab at the end of the tab strip.

[gharp]

good to know - thanks!

[Kvin]

Hi, thank you for the tab grouping feature! It's very convenient.

I'm glad you're considering workspaces as a feature for Firefox!

I want workspaces in one window.
I don't like the implementation in Edge, where they are in different windows.

I want to separate sets of tabs, for example
Workspace 1, these are YouTube tabs
Workspace 2, these are Reddit tabs

As for improvements to workspaces, I would like to have a sleep option for sets of tabs and auto add tabs to workspaces, like in Vivaldi.

And I would like to see the following improvements to tab grouping

The ability to pin tabs in groups so that they take up less space in the groups
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/pin-tabs-inside-a-tab-group/idi-p/95228

Option to automatically group tabs by domain, link, or site name
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/automatic-grouping-for-same-site-tabs/idi-p/54326#U54326

Subgroups so that additional groups can be created within groups
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/sub-tab-groups/idi-p/94890

Grouping tabs and workspaces for the mobile version of Firefox as well

[gharp]

Thanks @Kvin . For the workspaces, would you want to use tab groups (and potentially subgroups) within workspaces?

[Reitei17]

I just need a plus button beside the group tab name to add new tab on that group. just faster and easier to access. rather than click right and click new tab in group. especially in vertical tab mode.

[whoami730]

Plus ctrl+t should default to new tab in the group, instead of new tab somewhere else.

[elzar]

"And is collaboration with others an important feature of workspaces for you? "

What's with this weirdly leading question? I'm sensing that collaboration features are something management wants and not something users have ever asked for. It's like you're saying, "surely you want this, right? Right? Please want this so we can work on it"

How about fixing the years old tab grouping issues on GitHub instead of pretending they don't exist. This double speak is weird and until today I had no idea Mozilla was run like such a mess.

[tomosu]

Sometimes, I have a bunch of tabs in a tab group which makes collapsing that group tedious as I need to hold the left horizontal scroll button to expose the tab group icon to collapse it.

[falolaf]

This is how I would use workspaces. 

A workspace is opened in its own window and might consist of a set of tab groups, a flat list of tabs, or both. Two different workspaces might have the same type of tab groups. I.e., two different workspaces can have tab groups with same name and purpose but those tab groups does not share tabs. I guess one could look at workspaces as tab groups with subgroups.
For example I might have:

• Workspace A(Project A)
  • Project documentation
  • Bug reports
  • Code reviews
  • Document reviews
    
    
• Workspace B(Project B)
  • Project documentation
  • Bug reports
  • Code reviews
  • Document reviews

Today I try to mimic this by having different set of tab groups in separate windows. This is not optimal in any way as currently it is not possible to name a window, which makes it difficult to navigate among open windows. And when a window is closed it might be tricky to find this specific window in the recently closed window list, after a week or two. I have also noticed now and then that a closed window is not in the list of recently closed windows. (Likely a bug that I should report.) I have increased the number of windows to keep in that list but sometimes a temporary window is added to that list, which I am not really interested to have in the list.

As tab groups are global I have to name the same type of tab group with the task in its name. By doing this the list of available tab groups grow large rather qickly.

Currently I have no need to collaborate with anyone else. It would be really great to be able to sync the workspaces though.

Having different profiles for different tasks would not work due to that it is only possible to login to a specific Mozilla account in one profile, as far as I remember. Syncing would not work in this case.

Tab groups with sub groups would likely work fine for me to begin with.

[dimas_sc]

I'd like to use the new Tab Groups feature, but without the option to use tab groups like "tree style tabs" I can't get used to it 😞 It'd be magical to auto-create a group when I open a link from a page.

[gharp]

Thanks @dimas_sc. This sounds like the concept of tab "subgroups" (groups nested within groups), right? We've had others suggest this as well (for example: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/sub-tab-groups/idi-p/94890)

[Kylotan]

I was glad to see that feedback is being solicited about workspaces in particular. I used to use the Simple Tab Groups add-on before moving to a new PC around the same time that the new tab groups functionality was announced, so I wanted to have a chance to try the new system to be able to compare. But I was surprised at how different the functionality was.

Your question specifically asks, "where context separation via window management, profiles, and/or containers doesn’t meet your workflow needs". I suspect this is due to a misconception, namely that workspaces should be "entirely isolated from each other". I don't think that is what everyone wants from such a feature.

In short:

• I want to be able to easily switch context between different types of tab content;
• The switch should reveal one set of tabs and remove all tabs of other contexts from view;
• I don't want it to log me out of sites when I switch;
• I don't want it to use a completely different set of passwords/bookmarks/extensions when I switch.
• Working in a workspace is modal and any new tabs I open should, by default, go into the current workspace without requiring any intervention or prior configuration

So, regarding the options you mention:

window management - I don't see how this could substitute. Imagine I have a 'music' workspace, a 'gaming' workspace, and a 'home' workspace, how can I launch a specific window with the tabs in it that I expect? I don't see any functionality for that except for History > Recently Closed Windows which seems to be placing a lot of trust in Firefox to remember the window for as long as I might need it.

profiles - two big problems here:

• first, where's the UI for this? With a workspace I would expect to be able to switch from 'music' to 'gaming' in a click or two. Supposedly there was a 'new profile manager' that came earlier this year which, six months on, is still hidden by default. I don't want to trust my workflow to a feature that isn't considered ready for prime-time.
• second, I can't imagine the UX is going to be smooth, if these are completely isolated profiles. If I log into Bandcamp within my 'music' workspace I'll be annoyed if I have to log in again to view a game soundtrack from within my 'gaming' workspace. I'll be furious if I can't even get access to my saved password for the site because that's in the other profile.

containers - as far as I can tell this only solves the problem of enforcing isolation "to help protect your privacy" which is a non-issue here. They're also lacking on the UI/UX front because it seems to require explicitly deciding where each link or tab needs to be opened, either as you browse or on a per-domain setting.

"is collaboration with others an important feature of workspaces for you?" - absolutely not.

The suggestions above about being able to pin tab groups and to be able to have the non-focused group auto-collapse seems to meet almost all of my needs. And, again like the comments above, without that functionality I am finding that tab groups in Firefox are worthless to me. I set them up to cover the areas I wanted, but it is impractical to use them effectively, so I do not use them at all. It is hard to see what purpose they serve, as-is.

[arlowhite]

I've lost tab groups a few times, so I don't completely trust the feature yet. Please make sure it's impossible to delete a tab group without explicitly deleting the group. Maybe you could track cases where a tab group was deleted without the UI action to figure out how this is happening?

I just lost group in Firefox 145.0, I did something like open group in new window, search via address bar, click switch tab (some other window). Then the group deleted itself and I could not get it back via groups list or history.

So, besides this bug, a feature idea here is for History to have recently deleted groups so you can recover them.

[mastacheata]

I've had that happen to me as well, but usually I can get them back using the hidden tabs feature or Firefox View 🤷

[arlowhite]

I've used "Simple Tab Groups" and "Tree Style Tab" in the past; those extensions are a bit overcomplicated, but I do miss a few things from them. I feel like native Tab Groups can almost replace them with a bit more UI work.

I think the "Open Tabs" view should be a bit more capable and also let you organize tab groups. This should be the place to organize all your windows and tab groups.

* convert window to tab group

* drag tab to/from groups and windows

* delete windows/groups

* save & close tab group

* quick filters for Everything | Windows | Tab Groups

  * distinguish opened groups from closed groups, maybe useful to have filters for open vs closed tab groups as well. idk if you should be able to organize closed tab groups, it could be useful, but not the most important thing if there are technical issues with manipulating closed tab groups.

[jporter]

I'm a big fan of Simple Tab Groups and agree with all of your points, I feel like a lot of these features should be built into both "Firefox View" window. More robust tab group management is a must! Currently you can do _some_ things via the "List all tabs" dropdown, and other things you need to do by right clicking on the tab group in the tab bar. 

One other feature from Simple Tab Groups that really makes sense is assigning a default container for new tabs within a group (ex: a "Shopping" group will open Shopping container tabs). I know the Simple Tab Groups extension has a different workflow, but it would be cool to see some form of synergy between these two great Firefox features. For example, creating a new shortcut for "New tab in group" can add a new tab in the group I'm currently working in, and also use the assigned container for that group.  

[Rottendog1423]

Saved tab groups are huge for me because I use my personal laptop for my work, side hustle, and personal life. So saved tab groups mean that I can easily open and close all the tabs I need in the right containers for the particular context. They’re great. Definitely use them lots!

[mastacheata]

I would love to see a combination with the official Mozilla Addon Firefox Multi-Account-Containers.

You should be able to assign a tabgroup to a container optionally and all tabs within that group should open in the mapped container.

I would also like to have a `new tab in this group` or `open new tab in group x` functionality when I'm not navigating from an already grouped tab.

[scubasunny]

Same for me, i'm using heavily the Simple Tab Groups Add-On where you can do exactly this, assign containers to specific tab groups.
Without that, it's mostly the same as other Browsers as Vivaldi and Chrome are doing.

Even potentially having other system configurations for such a tab group, for instance other DNS Settings or Cookie behaviour could be useful.

[myspace]

I've never used a workspaces feature before, so no feedback there. My biggest request for tab groups is to be able to easily share them with others (friends, family, classmates, etc).