Any Chance Tab Groups Will Ever Come?

Firefox Development
#23

@Laura_Chambers

I have been a longtime user of Firefox, which became my primary browser from its first release. At that time, it was a breath of fresh air after IE, which was slow, did not block pop-ups, and lacked tabs.

Firefox was the one to show how convenient it is to use tabs.

:pray: May I suggest to let the Firefox development team focus on Tab Grouping functionality and that you assign enough resources (UI designers, engineers, and testers) to this crucial feature? Other browsers (Chrome, Edge, Vivaldi…) already offer this functionality. It is essential for modern-day browsing in which people have tens or hundreds of tabs opened at the same time. On the Mozilla Connect portal, it is the no.

I have tried tab grouping in Chrome and Safari and can confidently say that Firefox, with the Sidebery extension, is capable of handling not just tens or hundreds, but thousands of tabs. Right now, I have 553 tabs open in my home browser and 300+ in my work browser. Yes, I use two browsers (Firefox and Firefox Developer Edition) to separate personal and work activities simply because I use multiple monitors, and this seemed more reliable than using multiple windows in Firefox.

  1. Groups in Chrome or Safari are not a separate container (in the terms of Firefox container). This means they do not solve the problem of accessing one site, like I have a site that does not support user switching, and I would have to constantly log out and log in to switch “context,” all open tabs can potentially “break,” for example, redirect to a 403 because the work user does not have access to the home user’s data. So, grouping in Chrome does not solve the problem of multiple accounts by itself.

  2. Pin tabs in Chrome are the same for all tab groups. In Safari and Sidebery, you can have separate pin tabs for each group.

  3. Vertical tabs are much better when you need to have hundreds of open tabs. They allow you to adjust the sidebar’s width for personal customization between the amount of visible characters and space used. Eye scanning with vertical scrolling is easier, as vertical scrolling is more natural, most of the time we scroll vertically!

  4. Groups of groups? When I created several groups in Chrome for testing, I found that they take up space by tabs, in Safari or Sidebery I can create hundreds of groups, in Chrome after 5–10 groups I need groups for groups.

Overall, I see that groups in Chrome are a solution for very basic grouping tasks up to about 100 tabs, and after that, they cease to be useful.

At the same time, opening tasks in Sidebery immediately gives me groups, as tabs automatically fall into the parent group (any tab can be group by itself), so I don’t need to make additional efforts to get a group with the research that spawned 30 tabs opened from the initial page.

Why I think Firefox Panorama failed, as did Groups in Chrome – they require explicit creation and management of groups.

Therefore, I do not see why Firefox needs “groups like in Chrome”, if you want groups, copy Safari, they are done much better there. And even better, copy Sidebery, it’s genuinely the best way to work with many tabs.

2 Likes
#24

Thanks for this! I’m sending over to the team working on the feature details so they can review it (and … that’s a lot of tabs!!)

3 Likes
#25

Did a quick test with Sideberry, and the feature set is impressive indeed!
Personally, I use the Simple Tab Groups extension which follows a different paradigm but works fine for me.

The Chrome implementation has the advantage that most browser users are used to a horizontal tab strip and want to group tabs within this horizontal tab strip by drag&drop in a visual way. The Vivaldi browser allows Workspaces on top of that. That being said, vertical tabs offer other advantages, so it would be great if Firefox would allow for hiding the horizontal tab strip and replacing it with a vertical tab strip (like Edge does).

I hope that extensions offering different flavours of tab grouping (Simple Tab Groups, Sideberry …) can be built more efficiently on top of a Firefox TabGroup API in the future. And Firefox tab groups should complement, not replace Containers.

This makes for a heavy requirements set, but I am confident that the Firefox team can do it.

PS. Let’s not mention Mrs Chambers (CEO) in every post on this thread to avoid spamming her with requirements that are directed towards the development team. Thanks everybody :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#26

I used Tree Style Tab first for several months as it is very lightweight. Later I wanted to try out Sideberry as well and am impressed how good it is.
I definitely prefer the vertical tab grouping, as it is possible to create trees this way. But a friend of mine is annoyed from the idea of having vertical tabs.
He would love to see it similar to how Chrome has handled that (expanding folders, horizontally).
So I think it would be optimal to give the user the choice to use one (or both) of those options.

Since you are using two browsers to separate personal and work activities: have you tried using two different profiles instead? I myself use about:profiles sometimes to open a different environment for various purposes like testing which add-ons or settings conflict with a website. Plus, it saves two different sets of tabs/settings etc. It is probably similar to what you achieve, but within one browser and with unlimited different set-ups.

2 Likes
#27

Can’t wait for this feature. It’s the last barrier I have for switching to Firefox fully!

1 Like
#28

Same here, I think I might even pre-emptively move back and deal with the lack of tab groups until they’re added.

Be sure to keep an eye on the nightly and beta updates for whenever this comes out in early testing.

#29

@Laura_Chambers May i suggest to automatically make tab groups when links open in a new tab from a website (eg: opening a bunch of search result links by middle-clicking), and using a small local llm to give a reasonable name to said tab group?

1 Like
#30

Yup I think smart auto (ai) naming should be simple to do. I like the idea of smart grouping too.

#31

awesome! Thank you for being so responsive.

#32

Very much agree. The bugzilla items for this – I’m CC’d on many – date from well over a decade ago. Mostly they’ve been silent. I believe that the APIs that made earlier implementation unblessed were considered security and privacy risks, and that all browsers had adopted a standard for extensions that didn’t (or couldn’t) offer rich services for plugin authors.

Anyway, delighted to hear there could be some progress.

#33

As it is still in review, I’d be happy to see more than just tab grouping, but some open ends for developers to use. Plenty of extensions (Simple Tab Grouping, Sideberry, etc.) to FF lack the ability to hide the Tab bar whatsoever. Thus, if you want to you have to play around with CSS and basically open the back end of Firefox, which most of us would rather avoid.

I’m not familiar with Firefox’s API, but I really encourage the team to keep it open for extension developers, after all, Add-ons are what allow us to personalise the browser or fill in where we feel the browser lacks.

#34

@Laura_Chambers I think it is awesome that your team is working on these features. I have convinced multiple people to switch to Firefox in the last few months, but I myself have been slowly using it less due to a lack of these features. If it is not to much to ask - would it be possible to get a split screen feature like in Edge? That would definitely enhance Firefox’s usability and make it more attractive to a wider audience. Also, I love the personalization features, but I think a few more would also appeal to more people (just my thoughts). Thank you so much for you and your team and I am really looking forward to what you come up with this year. Good luck and God bless!

1 Like
#35

I agree that this is a necessary feature for Firefox, and while everyone has valid opinions I think it’s important to implement tab groups in a way that’s not just copying chrome.

Obviously having as many options as possible is ideal, but it’s not me maintaining that so I wouldn’t ask for it. Panorama, while unloved, was distinct and I’d love for whatever is built to be innovative and not just playing catch up with chromium.

So glad this is finally coming to Firefox!

#36

Since nobody has linked it that I can see, here is the vertical tabs idea voted on in Connect:

Hope we can get a two-for-one deal here!

Not that I think that a browser should primarily be for power users, in this case it is indispensable to anyone with a large number of tabs, and would be optional so no cost to casual users, and also it is very easy to go from casual use to accumulating lots of tabs (getting into uni or a job that requires lots of research, etc) so plenty will discover its value as they keep using Firefox.

Yes, at the very least, there should be an API to make the browser addons useful again. Now, not only is there no way to hide the tab strip, there is no way to easily access the sidebar containing vertical tabs.

Nobody has ever suggested vertical would be the default, but yes trees provide something horizontal tabs never can: clear visual context of where a tab came from.

1 Like
#37

VERY happy to hear this feature will come to Firefox.

I have only one wish how it should be implemented:

One way to collapse and expand the tab stacks should be double-clicking on the stack.

That’s all. This way is so fast and convenient. I feel very strongly that this is THE best way to expand/collapse the stacks. This needs to be there as a far as I’m concerned.

I would also encourage the developers to study how the original Opera browser implemented this feature. Still the gold standard in my opinion.

#38

I’m very happy to know that Tab Grouping will be coming to Firefox, this feature is very mandantory for Google Chrome users who want to switch to Firefox.

Thanks very much for listening to the userbase, let’s make Firefox great again!

1 Like
#39

Any chance that means we can get confirmation on vertical tabs too??

It’s easy to accumulate a lot since bookmarks feel too permanent, tabs are nicely ephemeral and can be treated like a long to-do list.

Might be nice to blur the lines a bit…

#40
1 Like
#41

Definitely! I couldn’t agree more. The split screen view on Arc Browser feels like a game-changer. It’s incredibly refreshing. Being able to split any tab or link directly from the context menu is a real time-saver. From a productivity standpoint, it’s an absolute must-have for any browser. Firefox could really elevate its game by taking inspiration from Vivaldi, Edge, and Arc Browser and integrating a native split view feature. (Not Firefox addons) @Laura_Chambers

#42

@Laura_Chambers @bjh
Well I did this for many years now :slightly_smiling_face::https://github.com/117649/Tab-Groups