Native Tab Grouping / More Customizable Tab bar

[Vinci480]

I'm personally a heavy tab user but have always wondered why there is almost no support for tab grouping or customization in the native tab bar in Firefox.

I think making it able to group like Google Chrome does for example or at least giving more access for extensions and add-ons would significantly improve the UI in that regard.

[Popeye]

Can’t wait for this feature. It’s the last barrier I have for switching to Firefox fully!
Wondering how Mozilla will implement it into Firefox. Personally I hope it will be similar to Chrome its approach.

[domaine]

Tabs

It's a shame that there is no function to group tabs by theme in the tab bar. The only browser to do this is opera with the tab island function. Finding this in Firefox would be a positive point for anyone who opens a large number of tabs.

[Jon]

@domaine we merged your idea into this thread - and we recently announced that a team is working on bringing tab grouping to Firefox. Stay tuned for more updates and please keep the feedback coming - the more details, the better. 

[SamKook]

Firefox already did it perfectly up to 7-8 years ago, just not natively, with the tab utilities addon. It was similar to how the very old opera 12 decades ago(when they used their own engine, not the chromium one they use now) and is still to this day my favorite tab grouping(I switched to firefox when they switched to chromium and lost this feature and I discovered this addon).

Then, the day the new addon system got implemented is the day I stopped using firefox because that addon stopped working. It was and still is to this day impossible to implement.

No matter the solution you implement natively, not everyone will be happy so I sincerely hope you're also working on allowing addon developers to also have the ability to manipulate the tab bar.

[Terax]

@Jon  You keep asking for feedback and ideas, so... ok. Although it seems braindead simple to me - just copy what chromium does.

One question to you, will we get notified here once the feature hits nightly builds? I'd jump on it immediately.

For me tab groups is mostly for organizing things that I want to keep handy. Because there is no "main" window, opening up additional windows always ends up a gigantic mess, because I click a link without paying attention and then I realize I have 10 new tab opened in my dedicated "gaming" window.

Currently the addons are... somewhat helpful with keeping the mess out. They can move all tabs from a particular domain to a new window or close duplicate tabs. But I'm currently at 15 windows and... it's not working at all. It's an active problem that I'm fighting the increasing number of tabs and windows. The performance of the browser UI is abominable at this point. The UI is freezing for 10-15 seconds every time I try to do something. And it's just the UI lol. The pages themselves are working fine. But try closing a tab and you're gonna do some waiting... it used to work fine but I guess there's been a huge regression a couple of years ago and there are no performance tests that cover this case.

As for the tab groups.

I work on something / trying to solve a problem - a tab group.
I research a subject - a tab group.
I play a game and I open several wiki pages that I will keep open until I get that particular achievement etc - a tab group.

When I'm not playing I'll just "close" (hide) the group and I can come back to it easily.
When I'm done researching something / I have solved a problem - I can close the entire group and keep my tab bar tidy.

For me it's always the same scenario. Open 30 wiki pages, do some browsing, open 10 new tabs and... where is that wiki page I had opened? Uh I'll open a new one instead of searching for it (especially now that the UI is so slow)... browsing my opened tabs you'll see groups of same website for example, then something else, then 30 of the same website again, ... repeating. Because the "group" is getting buried somewhere behind a bunch of new tabs. Being able to "close" (roll?) a tab group in tab bar like chromium does would alleviate this issue.

I don't need that to "sleep" the tabs or whatever, I want to be able to come back to it fast (that's the entire point of keeping them open). If I reach a point where my browser is using too much ram I can just restart it once a week or something.

What I need is to open all new tabs within the group I'm currently in by default.
Being able to open/close the group within the tab bar.
An easy way to break out of the group and open a tab outside (like ctrl+shift+t [I know this shortcut is taken already] or ctrl+middle click a link etc).

Personally that's all I need NOW.
If your goal is to stop bleeding users it might be enough for initial release.
If your goal is to lure users from chrome... probably more polish would be a good idea. There could be some additional comfort features like... always open a particular domain in a certain group? Analogous to how you can pin a domain to always open in a container today.

[BelFox]

@Jon  I have three further suggestions for the development team working on tab groups in Firefox. Could you pass this on?

1. Look further than Chrome/Edge and have a look at tab groups / workspaces in Vivaldi. I think it would be wise to build an information model, consisting of workspaces, tab groups, container tabs, normal tabs, pinned tabs and their mutual relationships. Make these concepts work together and make them accessible through an API for add-on builders.
2. Make the analysis, development and test process as open as possible. Previously, Figma's weren't always shared. I understand that not every document can be shared, but by allowing the community to consult mock-ups and models, valuable feedback can be given by add-on developers and others. Also, let us (Firefox users) know how we can help test the tab grouping feature (a new https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Foxfooding campaign, maybe?).
3. Get in touch with the developers of current tab grouping add-ons. Make sure they can make their add-ons more efficient by taking their requirements into consideration. The goal is to make their add-ons better, not to replace them with a one-size-fits-all built-in solution.

Thanks for reading, and good luck with this challenge! 💪

[RcVincent]

I just sign up Mozilla Connect to upvote this post.

Native support for Tab Group is so much important for productivity!

I'm always reluctant to use Firefox JUST because it lacks the Tab Group feature.

PLEASE implement this feature!

[stockhuman]

If I may chime in after a few years on this thread now that there's a focus on this feature: some have brought up Arc (Josh Miller's "The Browser Company") - and I think that's the best angle and feature-set to emulate.

Firefox has enjoyed a history as a tech-crowd favourite and a special relationship to Linux users. Arc is courting a design-and-usability-concerned crowd but also delivering on novel workflow features re: tabs. There's a space here to deliver that for MacOS, Windows and GNU+ and capture the want for a better browsing experience, without the uncertainty of startup profit-seeking moves and the ground truth of being at Chromium's whim.

Another implementation beyond the commonly suggested Edge & Vivaldi is "Orion" which is curiously based on WebKit. It too segregates tabs into workspaces, and allows for one level or hierarchical grouping.

Godspeed to the FF team

[agoodale]

Tabs groups are MUST HAVE!!!  In addition to what has already been stated, "inactive" tab groups should be removed from memory to save system resources.  They should be easy to relaunch.  There should also be an easy way to select which group(s) will launch automatically the next time Firefox is started.

[Relequestual]

I almost considered switching to chrome today for this reason.

I've used Firefix since version 2. That's very long. I have held my ground.

Contaienrs are great, but there's just too much friction for me to remember to use them. The user expereince just isn't good enough for every day use.

Containers are good for when you need isolation, but my day to day activity doesn't need that.

What I'd like to see is a very minimal version of native tab groups be released, then itterated on as required.

Panorama... oh how I miss you.

[zic700]

i have too munch opened tab !! (41!)

Firefox must have a better tab management like Opera or Vivaldi...

I use Firefox since 0.x version !

[aevictoria]

Yes! I am also really looking forward to the tab group like Yandex, Opera, Brave and Chrome. It's really very convenient

[tcbbd]

I must point out that: Firefox eats HUGE amount of memory when there are many windows. It will eat 5G+ when you have like 20-30 windows. So if you have hundreds of tabs and want to organize them into windows, each or several of them representing a topic/workspace, you'll run into problem.

[agoodale]

Thanks tcbbd for the response re memory consumption, but this is precisely why grouping is so important.  With a couple of hundred tabs, the memory consumption and speed loss that results is barely tolerable.  By using a properly implemented grouping process, all inactive groups could be "put to sleep", so they are no longer in memory.  As the day progresses and attention shifts to a different topic, a simple selection process could then put the current group(s) to sleep while activating another.  This is NOT just about organization and aesthetics, but very importantly must be tailored to free up those valuable resources, while simultaneously keeping things within easy reach.

[JamesBond007]

@ agoodale's comment

----------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks tcbbd for the response re memory consumption, but this is precisely why grouping is so important.  With a couple of hundred tabs, the memory consumption and speed loss that results is barely tolerable.  By using a properly implemented grouping process, all inactive groups could be "put to sleep", so they are no longer in memory.  As the day progresses and attention shifts to a different topic, a simple selection process could then put the current group(s) to sleep while activating another.  This is NOT just about organization and aesthetics, but very importantly must be tailored to free up those valuable resources, while simultaneously keeping things within easy reach.

----------------------------------------------------------------:

for the "putting tabs[/webpages] to sleep" i'm using a Mozilla-Firefox add-on called "Auto Tab Discard", which was suggested-to-me by a aquaintance of mine that was looking-for a Firefox-addon that does in-Mozilla-Firefox what happens natively in Microsoft-Edge (that after a certain-time of not touching-a-tab, the tab goes to "sleep"): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-discard/

and for the counting-how-many-tabs-you-have-open (and other useful features), i use "FoxyTab", https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foxytab/

i hope this helps.

P.S. currently?, i'm using Simple-Tab-Groups, because it's the closest-thing there currently-is to the classic "Panorama / Tab-Groups" that Mozilla-Firefox-4.0 USED to have.

and according to FoxyTab, i currently have 19,765 webpages/tabs, organized (i had to count them one at a time) into 213 different tab-groups.

yes,

i'm a *SERIOUSLY*-HEAVY Firefox user and a *SERIOUSLY*-HEAVY tab-user.