Reset tab navigation

[drafty]

Please consider adding a command to reset the navigation history of the current tab while keeping the current page open.

The operation would discard all entries currently available through the tab's Back and Forward buttons, making the current page the only entry in that tab's navigation history. It should not affect Firefox's global browsing history, bookmarks, cookies, or other browsing data.

For example, if a tab has navigated through:

Page A → Page B → Page C → Page D

the user could choose Reset tab navigation while on Page D, resulting in:

Page D

The current page would remain exactly where it is, but both Back and Forward would become unavailable.

A confirmation dialog would be appropriate because this operation discards useful navigation state. Ideally, Firefox could also provide a short-lived Undo option that restores the discarded navigation history if the reset was performed accidentally.

This would be particularly useful when a tab has reached an important or sensitive state where accidentally pressing the mouse Back/Forward buttons could navigate away from the current page or disrupt an ongoing workflow. It would also provide a clean way to establish the current page as a new "starting point" for navigation without having to open a new tab and close the existing one.

Another useful application would be long-lived or pinned tabs. Such tabs can accumulate a large navigation history over time, even when most or all of that history is no longer useful. Currently, a user who wants to retain the current page but discard its accumulated navigation history has to use a rather cumbersome workaround: unpin the tab, copy its URL, open a new tab, navigate to the URL, pin the new tab, and finally close the old one. A Reset tab navigation command would provide a simple way to clean up that stale navigation history while preserving the tab itself, including its position and pinned state.

The feature could be exposed from the tab context menu, for example as:

Reset tab navigation

This is distinct from Clear browsing history: the proposed operation concerns only the Back/Forward session history of the current tab and should leave Firefox's persistent browsing history untouched.

[Jon]

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[drafty]

I think that a conditional Undo mechanism could also eliminate the need for a confirmation dialog.

Rather than interrupting the user with an "Are you sure?" prompt every time, Reset tab navigation could take effect immediately and make Undo Reset tab navigation available in the tab's context menu. The Undo option would remain available only until the tab's navigation state changes, at which point it would automatically revert to Reset tab navigation.

This would provide protection against an accidental reset while keeping the operation quick and non-disruptive. It also avoids the ambiguity of a permanent Undo operation: once the user starts navigating again, the previous history is considered intentionally discarded and cannot be restored over the new navigation history.