Vertical tabs / sidebar - expand on mouseover

[Wakkashamshay]

Vertical tabs/the sidebar would benefit from an 'auto-hide' or 'expand on mouseover' feature. Similar to how it behaves in Edge, I would like to be able to expand the sidebar for vertical tabs on mouseover when I want to review my open tabs. This would allow users to avoid manually toggling the expanded view and will improve the experience when tab groups are introduced.

[Jon]

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

[mykothy]

If the sidebar was auto-hiding this would give more screen real estate to the main browser window.  I think browsers need to re-think their main interface.  Allowing this feature would also give sites the full window experience while allowing people to manage there existing open tabs.

Just a thought...

[Jon]

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

[oynx]

For pinned tabs and the vertical tabs expanding on hover, how about having the pinned tabs stacked on top of each other, instead of appearing side to side, so when the side bar expands, the tabs are vertically in the same position instead of jumping when the sidebar expands and closes.

Also the sidebar icons and tabs are ever so slightly misaligned, making them move slightly up whenever you mouse over with expand on hover activated

[brunoOh]

Hello,

I love the new vertical tabs feature, and especially the fact that they can be reduced and expand back at mouse hover. But would it be possible to place the cross to close a tab elsewhere then at the end of the tab ? It is the exact same place where the tab icon when the tabs bar is reduced, so when I want to change tab, if I am not very careful, it is very easy to close the tab instead of opening it.

Thank you

[ZEUS]

Can anyone tell us the users when can we expect the actual feature to come to the browser? it was promised by one of the community managers that with 137.0 we will get it, but we already got 138.1 but still the mouse hover sidebar auto expand & collapse feature isn't added. It is a gentle reminder to the developers as well as the community managers so that both of em can make the user requirement come to the product which is Firefox web browser in this case 🙂

[Wakkashamshay]

@ZEUSHi ZEUS,

You should be able to see the option under this:

If it's not there you can try to manually toggle the feature to on:

[ZEUS]

@WakkashamshayThank you so much for the info & yes it is working for me now

[noname1966]

Thank you Mozilla for implementing this feature!

[sucodemanga]

A vertical sidebar that completely hides and reappears on hover

My suggestion is to add a new option for the sidebar: an "auto-hide" mode.

The functionality would be simple and intuitive:

1. When enabled, the sidebar would completely collapse, freeing up 100% of the window's width for the web page.
2. To expand it, the user would simply move their mouse cursor to the left (or right) edge of the screen.
3. The sidebar would then smoothly appear over the page, ready for use.
4. Upon moving the mouse away from the sidebar area, it would automatically hide again.

Example:

[Jon]

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

[Jon]

@sucodemanga this feature is already available via the Customize sidebar settings - see this support article here to learn more. And if you have any questions, let us know 😃 

[sucodemanga]

@Jon You can choose to either hide the sidebar tabs completely or make them expand on mouseover. However, it is not possible to activate both options at the same time, as shown in the video example.