Native Vertical Tabs

[Gecko]

From the previous post on Crowdicity:

I would like to see vertical tabs baked in. MS Edge now has it out of the box!

I currently use addons for this - but there's no way to disable the top tab bar, which duplicates the tabs and takes up space.

Vertical tabs (with top bar disabled) would free up more space for web content, which is (usually) vertical. Most screens are widescreen (RIP ThinkPad 4:3 ratios), so the less browser UI at the top/bottom, the more content we can view.

The original post received 154 votes and as such was the 3rd highest voted post in the "General" category.

[scruel]

For everyone who are waiting for the official release, I already found a way to add this feature:

For how to part, just check the post in GitHub: Firefox's Vertical Tabs

This post is written in Chinese, you can use translator or just copy/paste the code (if you know what you are doing), however, I will post this tutorial in English if anyone required.

Have fun 🙂

[wanderer000]

Any luck with this feature request?

This is so useful that if it weren't for Microsoft's tendency to add intrusive features and tracking, I'd fully switch to Edge for my personal use.

[TheRealBev]

Someone gave me this solution to get rid of the unwanted horizontal tab bar;  I'm not smart enough to have invented it myself. I tried using just the first 3 lines, but that didn't work right.  It works for FF82/linux, but not for Nightly/linux.  Add the following to your userChrome.css file:

.tabbrowser-tab {
visibility: collapse;
}
.titlebar-button {
height: 27px !important;
}
#nav-bar {
margin-top: -42px;
margin-right: 140px;
box-shadow: none !important;
}

[uidensity="compact"]:root .titlebar-button {
height: 32px !important;
}
[uidensity="compact"]:root #nav-bar {
margin-top: -32px;
}

#titlebar-spacer {
background-color: var(--chrome-secondary-background-color);
}
#titlebar-buttonbox-container {
background-color: var(--chrome-secondary-background-color);
}
.titlebar-color {
background-color: var(--toolbar-bgcolor);
}

#main-window[inFullscreen="true"] #sidebar-box,
#main-window[inFullscreen="true"] #sidebar-box + splitter {
visibility: collapse;
}

#sidebar-box #sidebar-header {
display: none !important;
}

[Bader]

I recently started using vivaldi as my cromium alternative and the vertical tabs are great. It makes it harder to get back to firefox.

[Jaysius]

This is so stupid, so many browsers have this option in 2023, ADD IT BACK ALREADY.

[fski]

Dear Mozilla, please do it!

[NeonAtari]

I agree with this and the particular way that Edge implements it is perfect.

[jjb2024]

I would love native vertical tabs. I use Edge more often now because it has vertical tabs natively. The userchrome.css "fix" for removing the horizontal tabs (with Tree Style tabs) is finicky - works on some PC, not others, sometimes needs changing. Aaargh.

[richardschuit]

Defo would like this to be supported natively

[franzschneider]

Please, please, please can this be prioritized? This should be a no-brainer! Just give us the option to choose horizontal or vertical tabs already without having to have an extension. Not only is his sensible, it will eliminate the need for additional resource-hogging and data-gathering extensions just to get vertical tabs.

[firefly_katamar]

This is one of the major features that's preventing me from switching back to Firefox 😞 

[Allo1]

There are extensions like Tree Style Tabs, but then you have to mess with chrome.css to remove the no longer needed horizontal tab bar. This is clunky. Vertical tabs should be implemented natively. There should be a switch in the settings.

[Bix]

Brave browser has now also added support for vertical tabs.

[job]

I've read through all of 11 pages of comments and I can't see any convincing argument for why the vertical tabs themselves should be done natively instead of being relegated to an extension. Remember, extensions are one of Firefox's strengths. The reason why Chromium-based browsers like Edge, Brave, and Vivaldi are doing it natively is because IIUC extensions there are way more limited in what they can do in customizing the browser's appearance.

Now people are saying that the current workarounds to hide the tab bar (which is indeed necessary to have properly working vertical tabs because the native horizontal tabs are just a waste of space at this point) are clunky. I very much agree. I think Mozilla should provide an option to hide the tab bar via the right-click context menu on any of the toolbars (or the Customize Toolbar page). Hiding the tab bar alone can be useful outside of vertical tabs; I can imagine it being used by say kiosks where making the visitor use multiple tabs is not wanted, but still needs the navigation buttons and bookmarks toolbar to be visible (so full screen is not an option). By having this as an option regardless of extensions, this will solve the issue of disabling the horizontal tab bar not having a user-friendly method of doing it while simultaneously keeping the browser core lean by having an extension like TST do the job of vertical tabs.

The closest convincing argument I could find for doing vertical tabs natively is an enterprise policy blocking the installation of add-ons, but come on, can't you just talk to your IT about it? If everything is just going to be justified by "but my enterprise IT doesn't allow me to install add-ons" Firefox is just going to be bloated with features most people wouldn't need.

[look997]

@jobWebExtensions cannot disable the top tab bar.
For the Vertical Tab Bar to make sense, you need to disable and hide the horizontal tab bar. This is essential.
WebExtensions can't do that.

Make a generic API to disable the tab bar? Does that make sense? Mozilla will do it?