A way to manage Taskbar Tabs (PWAs)

[hackel]

I've just started playing with the Taskbar Tabs feature on Linux, and in spite of a few rough edges, I'm very happy with it so far.  The   The one issue I faced almost immediately was the lack of a way to manage installed Apps.  (Sorry, that's what they are.  Not "tabs".)

I propose a simple UI—a new item within the existing Library would be perfect—that allows users to edit the basic fields from taskbartabs.json like name, startUrl, and userContextId, or uninstall an installed app/tab entirely.

Use Cases:

1. I somehow managed to install an app twice.  This created 2 nearly identical .desktop files, but with separate taskbar-tab UUIDs.  I had no way to know which one was actually being used by the OS, or which one would be removed when I uninstalled the app.
2. I installed a Google app while logged into a second user account.  This requires prepending `/u/1` to the URL path.  Google doesn't seem to generate the manifest dynamically, so its start_url is always hard-coded to the server root, and when I launch the app, it opens to the wrong account.
   
   I first attempted to simply edit the URL within the .desktop file, but this frustratingly had no effect.  I wasn't even aware of the taskbartabs.json file yet, and only discovered it after significant digging online.  Of course this file can't be edited while the browser is running, creating yet another hurdle.

I believe it would be very helpful to users to streamline this whole process.

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[david-rubino]

Thanks for trying out web apps on Linux! (I agree, they're web apps, not tabs... I made up the "Taskbar Tabs" name to help explain the idea to people who weren't familiar with it). FWIW, the feature is still under development and you will hopefully see a few things get better in the coming weeks. 

But, a central UI for managing installed apps and changing settings on a per app basis will not be something that comes in a few weeks. I am very much tracking this in our backlog, and I'll monitor this thread for support of what's needed in terms of management UI in general.

Here are some of the things I have written down to date for per-site settings: Name, Scope, Home page, option to launch with Firefox, option to launch on OS startup, add/remove from Start menu, a way to manage which extensions are enabled. 

Here are some of the things I have written down for global settings: defaults for per site settings, list of installed apps with ability to launch, switch, and uninstall, an option to control whether a new site prompts to pin on install or not

Let me know what else and I'll add to my lists. And upvote this idea to help give momentum to the investment. Thanks!

-David Rubino
PM for Web Apps

[Josem]

I find this a very interesting proposal and it could be really useful.

I suppose this will also be influenced by the containers, right?

[hackel]

@david-rubino Those settings sound perfect.  Another convenient global function would be to duplicate an existing app in a new/existing container.  I would also prefer a global option to re-open any previously opened apps when launching Firefox, as opposed to a per-app setting.  I saw the note below in the source docs, and basically want the opposite, primarily so that I can install Firefox updates without interrupting my workflow too much and having to manually open the apps I was working with.

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Web Apps and Session Restore

Web Apps are similar to Private Windows in that they are not tied to the lifetime of normal browser session restore. Web App windows are not restore for users who have enabled “Open previous windows and tabs”, and will not prevent the restoration of windows restored by session restore.

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FYI, I've been daily-driving Taskbar Tabs (Teams, Outlook, and Gemini) all week, and they've just worked.  No real issues to report other than not remembering window positioning, but I think that's a GNOME/Wayland issue.

@Josem What I've observed so far is that if a domain is already set to open in a particular container, that will also get assigned when installing it as an App ("userContextId" in taskbartabs.json).  (Correct me if I'm wrong!)  This is basically exactly what I was hoping for, but of course it would be more flexible if users could manage this setting in the GUI at some point.