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.

[sheaf]

Since I figure the solution will involve Firefox View somehow, I would also like to boost this request which could extend to tab groups.

[TheRuggedEagle]

Please consider adding groups to tabs similar to how Safari has. Idk what they call this as I have yet to find a name/title for it. This would really help group tabs to avoid sporadic tabs that are connected but separated by many other unrelated tabs and also cut down on accidentally opening duplicate tabs.

[Motzie]

I have several professional and hobby interests that I follow and often (OFTEN!) wished I could simply select whichever from a pull down menu and instantly all the tabs for that interest of mine would appear on the top bar. Hope to see something simple and functional to test out!

[rv]

Not sure if someone already mentioned this, but I think native Vertical Tabs and Tab Grouping could have a Simple Mode (more or less what is being work already) and kind of an Advanced/Expert Mode, that should be basically Sidebery: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sidebery/ , incorporated as native code, an easy to activate in the SideBar options.

Kind regards.

[rkdover]

Lovely that this is getting implemented. I just tried the nightly build and there are some things that make it worse than competitors' tab grouping features, and difficult to use:

- No ability to create or modify tab groups without entering a menu
- No ability to fold groups (critical)
- No drag and drop functionality for adding/removing tabs

I think these are very important to make it a great feature. I use the groups in chromium-based browsers constantly, and I'm really missing them in firefox.

[EddySoeparmin]

Yes, I think grouping is essential for modern browser this day. I'm a regular Google Chrome user, and grouping several tabs into one help me to customize of how and where I browse. I use Firefox mainly for reading where it's easily open a new page when clicking on a hyperlink where Chrome lacks.

Please add Grouping tabs in Firefox.

[00prometheus]

I mentioned this as an idea of it's own, but I wanted to comment here as well.

I have huge numbers of tabs open (often more than 50, or even 100). It isn't because I am working on an extremely complex thing that needs huge numbers of tabs, it is because I leave tabs open that I might want to come back to later. That means it isn't one particular thing I am working on, there are tabs from maybe 10-20 different subjects, going far back in time, that I still have open because I think will come back to them later. Obviously this is really what bookmarks are meant for and the expected behaviour is that I bookmark what I want to return to and close those tabs. However, I am not good at housekeeping and creating bookmarks (or even just opening them) is annoying. So I end up with masses of tabs. To me, grouping tabs in the tab bar would just take even more space in my tab bar! What I need is a whole directory structure of different tab groups from a drop-down. There needs to be comprehensive tools to move tabs between groups it needs to be near instantaneous to switch between the groups as well. I also need to have different tab groups in different windows and because I often work on several things at once.

A good solution would be to integrate tab groups and bookmark folders. A tab group could simply be a view of a bookmark folder. Switching what bookmark folder I view is the same as switching tab groups. It needs to be fast though, si it needs to cache favicons and tab title and even thumbnail, because when you have many tabs open, favicons and thumbnails matter. Then all the synchronization, backup and organizational tools for bookmarks can be used for my tab groups!

[sheaf]

@00prometheusI have a similar workflow (hundreds of open tabs at a time, with different topic groups), which I am attempting to migrate from Chrome.

Personally, I like to reserve bookmarks for regularly visited sites, and use something like Session Buddy (Tab Session Manager on FF) to archive my open windows every couple of weeks; I tend to have ~500-1000 open tabs to archive each time.

Building on your suggestion, it could be possible to simply use a dedicated folder in 'Bookmarks Menu' of the Bookmarks manager as the archive destination. Unfortunately the current method for archiving all open windows is a little hacky.

An example directory structure, following my workflow:

• All Bookmarks
  • Bookmarks Menu
    •  Archives
      • 11.2.24
        • tabgroup1
          • site1
          • site2
        • tabgroup2
          • site3
        • tabgroup3
          • site4
          • site5

I think your suggestion on an improved 'view' for tab groups would be better targeted at 'Firefox View' (the file cabinet icon in the top left), rather than the bookmarks manager; for example, tab groups could be displayed as subdivisions of each window. Additionally, a potential 'reorganization' feature (dragging tabs to other groups/windows) makes the most sense from that page. However, I agree more could be done to allow for mass bookmarking from the Firefox View page.

[sohrob76]

It's been over 18 months since this request was made and despite thousands of people boosting the request we still don't have grouped tabs. Is it that big of a technical hurdle or is this something Firefox is still on the fence about?

[Jon]

@sohrob76 the current idea status is "In development" as we have a team working on this feature right now. Stay tuned in this thread - we'll be sharing more updates soon.

[Ramouz]

Waiting for Tab Groups for many many years now. Vivaldi has had it since about 2015. Opera before it. Edge has a really good one.

[Ramouz]

Waiting for Tab Groups for many many years now. Vivaldi has had it since about 2015. Opera before it. Edge has a really good one (my favourite implementation).

[Jon]

(Note: similar ideas have been merged into this thread)

[GlenDoza8765]

Please make sure that whatever solution Mozilla develops for tab grouping that it works with tab containers as well. I am currently using the Container Tab Groups extension for this but if there was a native solution with a better UX I would switch.

[00prometheus]

@sheafYes, I agree that the "Firefox View" has a nice interface for organising tabs in different groups, however I still think it is important that the underlying backing storage is simple bookmarks and the view is a view of a bookmark folder. Gathering the hierarchy of tab folders under a common folder is also a good idea. There are many advantages to using bookmarks as the underlying storage, for instance your issue of moving active tabs in Chrome to Firefox could be solved by bookmarking all tabs in a Window (I believe Chrome has such a function), then exporting your bookmarks from Chrome to Firefox (which you would do anyway). Then just open the folder where you bookmarked your Chrome tabs as a tab folder in Firefox and you will be back exactly where you left off! Bookmarks also get saved to cloud storage, so you get backup of what tabs are open for free, and you get synchronisation between devices for free as well.

So, yes, I like your idea of using "Firefox View" for organising and interfacing with tab groups, it is a great form of UI for the task, but I want to emphasise my main point of using bookmarks and bookmark folders as the underlying storage.