Sidebar and Vertical Tabs Launch in Release 136

[asafko]

Hi folks! The updated sidebar and vertical tabs are now rolled out and available to all release users on Firefox 136.

How to enable it
Go to Firefox Settings → General → Browser Layout and check Show sidebar. Then, choose the settings icon in the sidebar to customize which tools appear. You can turn on vertical tabs from sidebar settings or simply right-click on the Firefox toolbar or tab strip and select Turn on Vertical Tabs.

Firefox Settings: Browser layout

Customize sidebar options

Key improvements

✅ Horizontal tab users can now hide and show the sidebar with one click using the sidebar toolbar button.

✅ Sidebar settings have been streamlined, making customization easier.

✅ Close vertical tabs in one click without expanding them. The close button now appears when hovering over a tab favicon.

✅ We’ve removed auto-collapse behavior of vertical tabs, as it proved cumbersome for many folks. 

What’s next? 

We’re working on more improvements to enhance the sidebar and vertical tabs experience. Some top priorities include:

• Remembering your last opened sidebar panel. When you hide the sidebar and then reopen it, the last opened panel will already be expanded. We hope to ship this as soon as Firefox 137 (April 1).
• More sorting options for history and better keyboard navigation, to match the functionality of the previous sidebar version.
• Expanding vertical tabs on hover for easier navigation.

As usual, we appreciate your patience and continued use as we refine these features and experiment to help us get to a better, more polished experience. 

[Terrhy999]

I'm using the new Firefox vertical sidebar and have noticed an inconsistent display of the bottom toolbar items. When all default items (History, Tabs, AI, Bookmarks, etc.) are enabled, they appear as distinct, easily clickable buttons. However, if I disable any of these items, the remaining enabled tools stack vertically like tabs, which is less efficient and visually unappealing. It seems that the toolbar items only appear as icons when they are considered to be overflowing.

In addition to the main issue, I'd like to suggest the following features to enhance the new vertical sidebar:

1. Resizable Pinned Tab Section:
   Allow users to drag and resize the section between pinned tabs and regular tabs when the sidebar is collapsed. This would eliminate the need for scrolling when many tabs are pinned.
   
   
2. Hover-to-Expand Sidebar:
   Implement an option to automatically expand the collapsed sidebar on mouse hover. Provide an option to have the expanded sidebar float above the page content, rather than resizing the main window
   
   
3. Reorderable Bottom Tools:
   Allow users to rearrange the order of the sidebar tools located at the bottom of the sidebar.
   
   
4. Sidebar Extension Selection:
   Provide the ability to choose which sidebar extensions are displayed in the sidebar.
   
   
5. Toolbar/Sidebar Integration:
   Explore integration between the toolbar and sidebar, allowing users to add any Firefox tool to either location.
   
   
6. URL Bar Drag Margin:
   Add a small (approximately 2mm) margin at the top of the URL bar to facilitate window dragging.
   
   
7. Sidebar Tab Scrolling:
   Allow the user to scroll on the sidebar to switch between tabs.
   

[denikryt]

Hi there!

The new sidebar feature with vertical tabs is a nice update, something that should have been done a long time ago! I've been using TreeStyleTabs for a long time, and the new vertical tabs logic in the sidebar conflicts with it. I'd prefer if TreeStyleTabs could simply replace the default vertical tabs logic in the sidebar. Right now, with TreeStyleTabs enabled, I get two sidebars with tabs, and I have to close the default vertical tabs because I don't need them. However, the ChatGPT button at the bottom is handy, so I’d like to keep it.

The issue is that pressing the ChatGPT button replaces TreeStyleTabs with the ChatGPT window and enables the default vertical tabs. As a result, I hide the sidebar with the default vertical tabs but lose the ChatGPT feature. Also, I’m glad the horizontal tabs are fully disabled, as they’re completely useless.

To summarize, I don’t know how you should implement this, but please make it possible to replace the default vertical tabs layout with TreeStyleTabs. Or, if that’s not feasible, make it easier to hide the sidebar with the default vertical tabs and prevent it from accidentally reappearing.

Thank you.

[Gacalheiros]

The vertical tab is great, many thanks :).

But I am facing a problem. I have several tabs open and when the "expand sidebar on hover" is enabled, the scrollbar always go to the top, this makes navegation complicated. Keeping the sidebar present "solves" the problem, but would be nice to keep it close and have more space in the browser.

[MartinAFC2]

Using Firefox 137.0 (64 bit) Win 11 24H2

I have just noticed that the background colour of the sidebar and the customise firefox is a pinkish red. I much prefer them to be white. I cannot see or find a way to change the pinkish red to white nor why this colour has been chosen.

I do have a theme which includes various tones of red. Not sure if this is relevant but if it is, it seems to defeat the concept of having a theme, which I regard as a header that should not affect the body of the page).

Thanks in advance for the help.

[rioxalyz]

Suggestions for Native Firefox Sidebar

As a long-time loyal Firefox and Sideberry user, I would love to see Firefox continue to expand the capabilities of the native sidebar

• Option to have a compact layout. I moved away from Arc because its sidebar had too much padding and required too much scrolling to find any tab.
• Option to disable tab preview. It's useful sometimes, but when a laptop starts lagging it's doomed.
• Feature to unload a tab. As a chronic have-too-many-tabs-open person, the ability to keep a tab visible on the side but not have it take up RAM is incredibly life-saving.
• Option to specify where a new tab opens
  • After the last tab (loaded or unloaded)
  • Before the first tab (loaded or unloaded)
  • After/before current active tab
  • After/before current tab group (when we get tab groups (I hope))
• Enable horizontal scrolling on the sidebar. The text does not even have to truncate, I just want to what the tab says.
• Feature to group and nest tabs. And by extension, feature to collapse groups and nested tabs.

[BlackFalconKY]

Absolutely love this and have been waiting for years.  I use Firefox over Chrome mainly because Tree Style Tab plug-in that does this.  Lots of features still needed, like easier drag-and-drop nesting of tabs, the ability to drag and move grouped tabs with the mouse, and so forth.  However, this is an epic start.  Once I went vertical tabs, it wrecked me for all other browsers.  Thank you so much for officially adding this, and please continue developing features!

[Hive]

Hello, ty for this update! Just wanted to point out an annoying problem for youtube though. Even when the side bar is hidden, everything turned off, it doesn't seem to take into account that it's been removed, and leaves a gap+scroll bars right and bottom, which then leaves a white bar top right of a fullscreen video.

[Hive]

And scrollbar.

 

[oceanofmaya]

One odd thing I noticed is that there is a flexible space that pops up when vertical tabs are chosen that then shortens the address bar. You cannot remove this. It disappears if vertical tabs choice is undone. This is a bit annoying.

The new tab in the sidebar is at the bottom and moves up and down as you add and remove tabs. It does persist at the bottom if there are many tabs. It might be better if instead it was at a static location or at the very top. I have worked around this by having the tool bar also have the new tab icon.

[n9]

Hello, I'm testing on-hover feature of sidebar and thought I should mention that drag and drop of tabs to bookmarks sidebar can be improved if bookmarks were opened next to the sidebar and not underneath the sidebar. FF thinks that I want to drag and drop tabs to rearrange instead of put them in bookmark folder and you wouldn't have to assume this if the bookmark sidebar opened side-by-side to the sidebar when clicked.

[joeriddles]

Will unpinning extensions from the sidebar be worked on soon? This was asked about back in Nov 2024. Loving the native vertical tabs so far!

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/sidebar-and-vertical-tabs-release-channel-experimentation...

[Dorraj]

Please bring back the ability to show per-site date and time in History instead of only being able to use the much-too-vague dropdowns. Going back a month makes it very hard to narrow down anything since it's all under a single month's dropdown.

[rand0]

Why is the pinned tab area so small? I have the width at 1 icon and I can only see 5 tabs at a time and have to scroll the rest. While there is tons of unused space below and we cannot move the divider. Whyy?

[leapedalea]

I'm loving this new feature! 😍

Just to nitpick, there's an issue when clicking on a tab, as the focus is not set immediatly on the site itself. For example, there's a common action that I usually initiate with space bar, and now clicking on the tab and pressing space does nothing, as I have to click on the site to bring the focus to it first.

[cayhorstmann]

I would like an option to hide the sidebar when there is just one tab.

[cayhorstmann]

It is possible to do this with userChrome.css:

#tabbrowser-arrowscrollbox-periphery { /* + button for adding new tab */
    display: none !important;
}

.tools-and-extensions.actions-list { /* gear icon, maybe other tool icons */
    display: none !important;
}

tab:only-of-type {
    display: none !important;
}

#tabbrowser-arrowscrollbox {
    min-width: 0 !important;
}

[maestroj]

I would also love to see an option to have the urlbar in the sidebar.

[DaddyYusk]

Currently we don't have any way to customize which extension is displayed in this vertical sidebar.
It seems to be a bit random.

[cmdline]

Love this!! Just came back to Firefox after using other browsers for years. 

[treelike]

Glad to hear that expanding vertical tabs on hover is in the works! Would love to see this feature.

[PandoMatic]

I like the new Vertical Tabs.

[PandoMatic]

Also, Please add a title bar for Firefox in Vertical tabs mode, Its hard to do Tiling stuff or move the window without it. Something like the Brave Browser's Vertical Tab Mode will do the job.

[exekutive]

completely useless without a shortcut key. just more work

[rgcviper]

For the record, I found out how to hide the tabs from view unless I hover over them ... just drag the bar to the right of them towards the left, until the descriptions disappear. Awesome--I'm never going back to horizontal tabs. Cheers, all.