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.

[FirefoxConnect]

After using tab groups for a bit longer,
1. I am ever more appreciative of the effort put by the Firefox team into this!
2. I have a few more comments:
- There is a bug: whenever I open a new tab at the end of a group, it is opened in the next group instead of the current one.
- It would be very nice if one could perform operations on groups: 1. move the group (and all of its tabs) around the tab bar, 2. extract the group (and its tabs) to a new window, 3. bookmark the group (and its tabs), 4. close all group tabs.
- It could be cool if one could associate groups with containers: whenever I open a new tab in a specific group, it should use a specific container.
- Another nice-to-have is the ability to create empty groups (currently, closing the last tab of a group causes the group to disappear).

[Var-Pro-12]

When is Firefox (across devices) going to bring "Tab Groups" in-built in 2025 as it is difficult to ditch Chrome esp., if it is related to work or research and similar tabs are opened up?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1476796#answer-1691390

[Crutishnyk]

I agree about the ability to move the tab groups around. Unfortunately, for now, it seems impossible to do

[Maelstromeous]

@Var-Pro-12Go to `about:config` and search `browser.tabs.groups` and enable it.

Very happy to see this somewhat possible in Firefox now! Needs a bit more fine tuning, and desperately needs the ability to move tab groups around, but it's a fantastic start!

[jf]

When double clicking on the group symbol, the tabs move and go to the last tab in the group, but it would be better if the tab bar did not move, showing the group symbol, as we can quickly close the group again if necessary.

[Tuki_Tuki]

Must have feature in my opinion is to have ability to autogroup by domain (or some other criteria). And even maybe have a feature to auto add newly opened tab to group if it meet criteria of this group.

First one is already implemented in Vivaldi at least. Second one i didn't see anywhere yet.

Maybe something akin filter rules in Thunderbird?

[jammet]

I agree Tuki, for me the whole point of the exercise is that I don't have to group them myself. Like I have to do currently.

[koko_villa]

@JonAdmin, you mentioned this same updates coming soon thing for the past 1 year and beyond. Why can't you see the thousands of people means urgency??? Unless it's a bot moderating, it has been months since i made this initials request of Tab grouping, what you people brought was some unnecessary personal, work and stuffs which doesn't even make sense to the use of web browser. People want to use the thing, but it seems you are Firefox can't do it. Because 18+ months? For tab grouping? And tab saving? huh?? Come on. Unless you don't want Firefox to be the default browser. After this December, if I don't get any updates, I will simply delete Firefox. because it cannot do what I want to use it for.

[fraggedy_andy]

@koko_villaIf you have Firefox 133 installed, you can turn it on now.

1. Open a new tab
2. Enter about:config in the address bar and
3. Agree to the “be careful” warning
4. Type tabs.group in the search field presented
5. Find the browser.tabs.groups.enabled preference
6. Click the toggle at the end (to flip the value to true)
   
   https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/12/how-to-enable-firefox-tab-groups

[ting]

I agree with @Tuki_Tuki and @jammet about autogrouping by domain!

[howiejc]

Welp, it's been over 2yrs & 7mo since the post & Mozilla still hasn't added / improved this feature.... sad.

Lack/deficiency of this feature is the primary reason why I'm using Edge / Chrome at work.

Unfortunately, FoxyTab extension doesn't make using tab groups/containers easy to use like Chrome/Edge either.

Could we please improve this feature natively?

Functional tab grouping (and/or improved container handling & management) has to be an extremely desired (arguably necessary) feature?

Thanks,

Howie

[lucaruby]

Once again tried to move to FF from Vivaldi after hearing that this update had been added.
Sadly this is somehow worse that Edge's implementation which is honestly horrendous.
Really cannot understand how this improves on just having a mess of tabs open at all.
Tabs opened from inside a stack are not automatically added to the stack. (Unless the open tab is either A. not the last tab in the stack
B. the tab proceeds the stack, even if it is not part of the stack.)
Collapsing the stack sometimes is a single click other times its a double click. When using vertical tabs I was unable to collapse them at all.
Not being able to move tab stacks is kind of an insane oversight.

This feature seems to be designed for categorization rather than quick and simple organization and clutter reduction. The fact every time you create a stack if pops up asking you to name it seems to indicated this. Just let us rename after the fact, we don't need a popup taking up space and time.

I really hope FF starts copying Vivaldi's implementation rather than a half baked version of Edge's tab stacks.

I know I am quite critical here, however this feature has been marked as "in development" for over two years now. I just cannot understand how in that time so little has been achieved.

[howiejc]

1 thing to consider when deferring features to add-ons / extensions is that they can often conflict or be incompatible with each other resulting in a lose-lose / dead-end scenario.

E.g., Simple Tab Groups seems great but has some conflicts with Tab Session Manager.

So we need some native / common framework / baseline / integrated solution where appropriate.

[howiejc]

100% concur w/ @Vinci480's 2 points:

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@Vinci480 wrote:

anyone working with a lot of tabs already knows, its enough struggle to stay on top of all of them, let alone needing to have the patience to surgically align each tab with nano meter precision.
It needs to be a "I chuck it here and be done with it" kind of feel.

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@Vinci480 wrote:

There current selection of 9 is not that useful in my opinion.
As I think most heavy tab users that need groups can easily fill 9 groups up, and as someone who loves to specify colours and icons to stuff, not having the freedom to give each group a specific colour feels a bit limiting, especially considering that it wouldn't be much extra to implement that.

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 For the 1st one, there could be some sort of "hysteresis" / brief hold/time-delay style behavior similar what exists in Chrome/Edge to "enter/exit" tab groups while dragging tabs around.

Clearly, the ability to collapse & expand tab groups is critical to proper implementation of this. Perhaps a toggle key / option helps with dragging tabs into/out of groups that are collapsed vs expanded.

Hope this gets implemented at some point. For now, back to Chrome/Edge at Work.

[sf1tzp]

I'm happy to see that this feature is in development. I enabled it and noticed another UX issue (maybe mentioned here already)

If I have a tab group and non-grouped tabs open in a window, closing the last non-grouped tab will close the window (including the tab group). The tab group is not visible in 'Recently Closed Tabs' list either. Pressing 'cmd+shift+t' to re-open the last closed tab will re-open the non-grouped tab AND also restore the tab group.

I'm sure this behavior is known already & the feature is still WIP... but just in case 🙂

Thank you Mozilla!