Seeking your feedback on Tab Groups

[gharp]

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

We 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!

[gharp]

Thanks, all, for the helpful suggestions so far! For those of you interested in pinning tab groups -- @DazedNConfused,  @yermulnik, @JTelcontar, @Kylotan, and others -- can you describe in more detail the behavior you would want from these pinned groups? For instance, would they always appear at the left/top of your tab strip (similar to pinned tabs)? Would these pinned groups be accessible elsewhere? We would appreciate hearing these specifics, because they will help shape the potential implementation.

[yermulnik]

For me it's these basic specs:

• Have them pinned at left side of the tab strip similar to pinned tabs (don't care of accessing them from elsewhere, I'm good with tab strip only)
• Have pinned tab groups distinguished from pinned tabs in some way (maybe a small label over the tab icon 🤔)
• Allow arbitrary order of pinned groups and tabs (rather then fixed order of e.g. pinned tabs first + pinned groups on right side of pinned tabs)
• Keep tab group colour when group is pinned (and keep the rest of features like previewing the list of tab titles inside group on hovering)
• Allow expanding pinned group without unpinning it (probably tabs inside pinned group should be similarly "pinned" as in have tab title shorten to icon only as pinned tabs do)

Thank you!

[Kylotan]

To be clear, pinning the tab groups doesn't really solve my problem on its own and I don't have a strong opinion about it in the absence of the other functionality that would solve my problem.

I currently use the vertical tabs sidebar, and if the groups were pinned at the top and nothing else changed, it's hard to see how that would be usable since the tabs associated with the group would be nowhere near. 

I already have access to all the tab groups via the List All Tabs button at the top right (which I didn't discover until recently - someone tell the UX team that these minimalist monochrome icons are a usability failure, please) but without the choosing of a group also hiding all irrelevant tabs and automatically opening subsequent links within the same group, it's completely worthless to me. I honestly don't see what benefit people get from tab groups as they currently stand (though I appreciate I am not in the majority). 

[vemman]

Workspaces would be a nice addition to organize tabs into different "themes", for example one for work, one for shopping, one for financial etc. Actually that's the reason I am currently using the Sidebery extension and not the tab groups feature which I find very limited since I have hundreds of tabs open at any time.

[samyotix]

Tab Groups are nonsense, the only time I use them is by mistake (so I am annoyed whenever I see this useless "feature").
I have been actively looking for an Android browser without tab groups and will likely try to find an extension to disable tab groups on Mozilla desktop. (I might switch to Vivaldi instead, as they do not use bull**bleep** AI nonsense.)

[yermulnik]

@samyotix While I agree that there should an UI config knob exist for this feature to be disabled for those who don't want it, you may search the web for `firefox disable tab groups` and find plenty of pages that provide howtos on this.

[jack66james]

I’ve been using tab groups regularly, and they’ve really helped keep things organized. Saved groups are useful, but syncing them across devices would make them even better. Workspaces also sound like a great idea for keeping different projects separate without needing extra windows. Excited to see how these features develop.

[EthanCole]

This is a great initiative! Personally, I’ve found saved tab groups extremely useful for organizing projects or research topics—much faster than using bookmarks because I can reopen an entire context at once. Syncing tab groups across devices would be a game-changer for me, especially when switching between work and personal machines.

Regarding workspaces, I often juggle multiple projects simultaneously, and isolating sets of tabs for each project would help me avoid distractions and keep everything neatly organized. Collaboration would be a nice bonus, but my main need is smooth context switching within a single browser window.

Looking forward to seeing how these features evolve!

[entibo]

I'm using tab groups aggressively on small groups of tabs, even a single tab, to label them and keep track of what I'm doing. I need workspaces to manage different activities and projects. Honestly the "Recently closed windows" feature would do the job if there was a way to name windows.

[okay_okay]

I'd like to be able to open bookmarks (the entire set or a select few) as a tab group. 

[gharp]

@okay_okay others have suggested this and similar functionality: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/open-bookmark-folder-as-tab-group/idi-p/96992. Feel free to upvote and/or comment there. Thanks!

[Kevin_W]

The tab groups sound very convenient and efficient for those using it. When I am using edge though, I always accidently create group tabs, and it feels impossible to ungroup them. Advice from a regular user, try to make it as easy as possible to ungroup tabs.👍

[gharp]

@Kevin_W many thanks for your input. Have you tried using tab groups on Firefox -- and, if so, have you found it easy to group and ungroup tabs?

[Kevin_W]

Yes i have! It is definitely easier than some of the other options!

[segleaur]

I'm happy to see that use cases and feedback is being asked on the use of tabs, workspaces, window management, _and containers_. Reading through the feedback, I'll echo some of the points I've seen brought up.

You mention _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._

In my use case, my workspaces, that can be several windows, use containers to isolate projects and personal tabs. Similar to falolaf I have workspaces set up as:

• Workspace A (Personal)
  • Window A
    • Tab A
    • Tab B
    • Tab C
  • Window B
    • Tab D
    • Tab E
    • Tab F
  • Window C
    • Tab G
    • Tab H
• Workspace B (Project A)
  • Window A
    • Tab A
    • Tab B
    • Tab ...
• Workspace C (Project B)
  • Window A
    • Tab ...

And so forth.

This allows me to open / close workspaces with the appropriate accounts logged in, as needed. I can pull out a temporary "working tab" of that specific container that's focused on a single task, if required, without interrupting the order and layout of the primary tabs I would use in that context.

Today, I use a mix of Firefox's Multi-Account Containers, Simple Tab Groups, and Sticky Window Containers to mimic the use case I had in other browsers.

This mix allows me to have windows associated to a container (forming my "workspace" concept) to be able to focus on a specific area / topic and not have logins leak across workspaces (i.e., multiple logins for the same site).

If I close a window, I can recover the state of that window and open all the tabs from that state to pick up where I left off (part of the functionality of Simple Tab Groups) and ensure that all subsequent tabs in that "workspace" use the same container (the functionality of Sticky Window Containers and Firefox Multi-Account Containers).

To add an additional layer, I may also have a Simple Tab Group + Multi-Account Container + Windows combination from another device. I don't use Tab Groups because they currently aren't supported by Firefox Sync, which is part of the puzzle. While Simple Tab Groups doesn't directly support Firefox Sync, there is a workaround that is acceptable for now. Accessing a "workspace" from another device (or the "workspaces" from my main device on another) is part of my workflow.

Hope this helps gain insight and happy to answer any questions!