Firefox Finally Did It (Tab Groups)

Why people like 50 tabs at once. I can't understand.
- Neither can we.
- Heres a neat easter egg: If you open enough tabs on firefox mobile the number in the tab icon changes to an infinity icon
  
  On Chrome it becomes a smiley face. I use Firefox and my wife still uses Chrome.
  
  I'm constantly trying to keep under that number, lol. It's a shame Easter egg
- Close tab button is a lava
- I used to feel the same way. But recently, I just don't have time to 'finish' each tab/section. When I was younger with more time, I could.
  For example, the first section of my browser is several self hosted apps I'm currently implementing. So, I don't want to lose the relevant forum posts/documentation.
  The second section is some articles I couldn't finish reading.
  The third section is something I'm researching for my work.
  Fourth are media tabs, some YouTube videos I haven't finished, a music tab, etc etc
  So basically, if I had time to read the articles, one section closed. Or finished my implementation, etc.
  The hard part this is this is every week. Always new projects, work or personal. Always new studies to read. Always new vids. You get the point.
  
  It's akin to when everything is urgent, nothing is.
  At one point, you gotta accept that you can't do everything and move on. You can always re-find the information if it comes down to it in the future. Or you can use bookmark folders to be able to eventually go back to what you think is important.
  If I have more than 6-7 tabs open, I check what I need to absolutely save and add that to a bookmark folder, then I close my browser and start fresh.
- Agile and task reprioritization at work.
  Too many projects to work on at home.
  Games.
  
  agile
  Lol sure thing.
- At work I’ll have like 20+ tabs open and I eventually am like F it, close everything and start over. Usually feels good.
- They don't know how bookmarks work.
  
  Bookmarks are great if I remember what I want is there. Usually bookmarking is like putting a piece of paper in cabinet that I will never open.. A tab is leaving the paper on my desk for me that I will rediscover.
- adhd. I'm considering making at alert for when my browser uses so much tabs that I'm almost out of RAM
  
  Just install the Auto Tab Discard extension. After a certain amount of time it will replace your loaded tab with a (RAM-free) placeholder that reloads when you click it again. Me, my ADHD brain, and my 500 tabs can be at peace now.
  
  The only way to keep my ADHD at bay when I'm on the computer is to be radical with my tabs. Don't need it in the next hour? That's definitely a bookmark, not a tab. I configured my browser to not save tabs between sessions so I always start clean. I'd long be dead otherwise, suffocated by my own browser tabs.
- to hide thier porn tabs.
- I storing YouTube links that I would watch next time
  
  Bookmarks? Or if you're logged into youtube, they literally have a "watch later" option to keep track of these.
  
  Text document
  "Save to watch later"
  Bookmark
  There are options

finally firefox re-added tab groups, after removing them once already in the past >_>
https://venturebeat.com/mobile/mozilla-is-removing-tab-groups-and-complete-themes-from-firefox/
- It looks like the ux is very different this time tho
  
  yeah it sadly just seems to be a copy of the chrome one

whoa. mozilla doing something the people want?? WHAT PARALLEL WORLD IS THIS?
- Don't worry they say they'll shove AI in it so it's definitely our world

As a librewolf babe, I'm keeping an eye on this: https://codeberg.org/librewolf/issues/issues/2458
Tab grouping is so useful and something I've always had to resort to extensions for. Good for Firefox for this, can't wait for it to make its way to a browser that doesn't sell users data.
- Hey, you can use tab grouping in Librewolf if you set browser.tabs.groups.enabled to true in about:config
  
  Thank you for this!
- By now you would've expected someone to have pointed out what code is actually collecting that data that's supposedly sold.
  
  Yeah, it still seems like an overreaction(with good intentions) to a poorly communicated change, which, yes, might mean they'll do it in the future. But for now, they have the benefit of the doubt from me, and once it starts happening, I'll move to a fork.
  That being said, I don't know anything about the code, so I have to count on the community to make it known that it's actually been implemented.
  For now, as far as I understand, the only indication that they're even considering it, is that change in the ToS or whatever. Nothing else to suggest it's happening.

live to help you declutter
Me ready to clutter even more 😈
- Right??! So instead of clutter of tabs it will be clutter of tab groups… of tabs, lol.
  
  Now that's my kinda thing!
  There is only solace in chaos
- Hi sorry to bother, how come your name is red in voyager? Tyvm
  
  Hey no bother at all, I think it's just because I'm an admin in my instance

I'm glad they've added it to desktop, but based on my usage it's more important for me on mobile. Hopefully they bring it to Android soon.
- As someone who is disgusted by people's browser tab hygiene on desktop, I will say that I do have this issue on mobile. But it's really more about how the browser is set up (on Android at least). Every single link I click opens a new tab, and I almost never scroll through existing tabs because, out of sight out of mind.
  
  The problem for me is that I'll keep things open for reference. Like I might have a few tabs open with info about a game I'm playing, or researching a purchase I'm trying to make. So having those grouped on mobile is super helpful.
- A million times this. But now the backend is done, hopefully mobile isn't that far off.
- Agreed. But I'm glad it's native to desktop Firefox now. Grouping tabs in desktop works for me to hide the hundreds of tabs I keep to tens of groups 🤪

I'll never understand you people that need like 50 tabs open at once.
- I have a few use cases:
  Many youtube videos that are like 30+ minutes long saved for later
  Documentation on some stuff that I need to go back and forth
  Movies or games that I found, but don't want to write down and forget
  Going down rabbit holes on wikipedia and saving it for another day
  Everything else that catches my attention and deserves a honorable spot in the tab bar
  Basically, I use my browser as a notebook. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
  
  Yeah those all seem like great uses of bookmarks and save functions.
  
  So a shit ton of tabs that never get looked at again? I swear all of you secretly want your tabs to disappear so you have something to complain about.
  
  I will do my good deed of the month. You seem like a prime candidate for Tab Stash. Does the same but better than Tab Groups. Check it out. You might like it.
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-stash/
  Let me know, love it or hate it. Cheers.
  
  Have you heard of bookmarks? There's a bookmark toolbar, that could look almost exactly the same if you want. Including folders with sub-folders, etc.
- I have a colleague who even saves all his tabs using a plugin, just in case he will need them at some point.
  I dont know, I never have problems finding what I need so dont need to save anything.
  Tab groups are great though, I need them so I can have groups with our aws accounts at work. That way i can just quickly get in to any account.
- Sometimes I ended up with +50 tabs because I just don't close them. But when the computer restart and Firefox ask me to restore them or start a new session, I always go for a new session. And I never felt that I lost something.
  
  I closed my tabs with the window automatically
- Nah, just 200 or more
- I used to never close tabs and they would accumulate as I kept doing more web searches and other activities. Now when I need to do stuff I usually open a new window instead for different tasks and if I need to free up RAM then I start closing other windows for tasks I'm not doing anymore so it closes all of the related tabs at the same time

The way they did it though.. the tab group name cant be collapsed so it takes a lot of room. I find I'm still using task oriented groups from the Simple Tab Groups extension, and then using the new core groups feature as a way to group subtopics for that task.
And before you say "you must have a million tabs".. I used to have millions of tabs, but now i average less than 100 when I have a lot of tasks I need to balance, and I know what all of them are open for. So when I complete a task I delete the Simple Tab Group and say bye to all those tabs.

Can someone at least help me understand what tabs have that bookmarks don’t?
If i have more then 4 tabs open i get anxious because i can’t intuitively remember what each does. I have folders for categories of bookmarks.
- It's a combination of things... I'm a software developer, so I'll often end up with 20+ tabs open while resolving a problem.
  I don't want to bookmark them because I don't need them when I finish the task.
  I can't close the tabs until I'm sure everything's working because Google sucks these days and who knows how hard it'll be to find the source again.
  Relying on browser history is like finding a needle in a haystack. Tasks can take multiple days and 100 different entries in history.
  I might have "finished" a task that still needs tested and I know it's a bit shaky; I'll want to move onto a new task but keep the most useful references until I no longer need them.
  I only bookmark pages that I'll need long-term or multiple times. It's already hard enough to keep those organized...
  My tab hoarding has only gotten this bad because search engines are terrible now and the amount of AI garbage to sort through makes finding anything useful a pain in the ass the first time; let alone trying to find it a second time.
  
  Relying on browser history is like finding a needle in a haystack.
  Oh sweet Satan, yes. I wish somebody could explain to me why browser history is so awful.
  
  I have the same workflow. Usually, I never have more than maybe three tabs open, but when I'm debugging something.... oh god. Easily 15 or 20.
  I also bookmark extensively, and actually have my address bar set up to only give me suggestions from my bookmarks. Additionally, I use a tiling window manager, which makes managing windows and tabs very easy. I really don't have a use for tab groups, but, who knows, maybe I'll learn to use them someday.
  
  I can't stay productive with 20 tabs or applications open. I waste time searching. I feel drained if I'm working on a tough job and need something that is hidden. Maybe it's on another desktop. Maybe it's open in another instance. Maybe it's not even open. Not for me.
  
  You need Tab Stash in your life.
  
  Maybe a better solution is to stop using Google...?
- if i bookmark something i will never look at it again
  
  I only find my saved bookmarks randomly by typing something in the address bar and the bookmark popping up as the first result.
  
  You don't have to, my dude, you can set your address bar to search through them.
  
  You are entitled to this but I don’t understand why it makes a difference if the icon is above or below the url here.
  If you have bookmarks hidden, thats an argument for a pretty bookmark manager.
- I keep tabs open for active projects. Once the project is over, I bookmark them for future reference.
- Tabs get in the way and force you to actually address them instead of ignoring them. In theory.
- I’m the same way, I think it’s just a younger generation thing where they never close tabs and can have 100+ open at once
  
  Yeah, older folks remember the times before browsers had any kind of memory management w.r.t. tabs. And you had maybe 8GB RAM (and that would have been considered beefy). The browsers themselves were also, more often than not, just straight up memory leaks. The longer you kept the program open, the the more RAM it would take until it broke.
  No shot you could run up anywhere near those numbers of tabs before your entire system would get bogged down and eventually the browser would crash (and you'd lose them all)
- You’re on of us then!
  I, and many others, start closing stuff when there’s more than a handful.
  Others, like many, just run then forever and ever. A sea of icons, tiny and compressed. Worrying they’ll lose that tab they really like in amongst the clutter. Unaware of the history feature.
  
  History shows everything I've ever been to including the "nope that top result in my search engine actually didn't contain the search string anywhere in its contents and is thus useless to me." pages
  Bookmarks are for things I routinely go to for years
  Tabs are useful results for the projects I'm working on now.
  Pinned tabs are the pages I visit multiple times a day.
  None of those is a substitute for any other.
  
  I'm aware of the history feature. It doesn't do what you seem to think it does (keep a tab in suspension in an easily accessible location over multiple hours or days of browsing).
  Now, the OneTab extension? That's actually suitable for this purpose. History doesn't do what it does.
  
  You might have a valid point if history fucking worked.
  
  I can't stand having more than maybe 5-6 tabs open. As the poster above stated, it just gives me anxiety to have random tabs open. I get disoriented trying to figure out what my focus is in a sea of tabs.
  
  Exactly, and if its important you just bookmark it.
  I tend to shorten my bookmarks to just a space so in practice they are just a row of tiny icons anyway. They are always at the same spot and only take resources when needed.
  I would love a vertical bookmark sidebar but for some reason we have to reinvent the wheel with tabs.
- If i have more then 4 tabs open i get anxious
  You are alone on that one. Virtually everyone I know, I look over and they have 50 tabs open LOL

I love it, it was basically the only thing I missed when I switched from Chrome to Firefox. I've reorganized all of my tabs and everything is so much cleaner than it was a few days ago.
Now we just need jxl, webgpu, and better themes!

So now when I open my mom's computer, she see 20 tab groups, I'll know it's even worse than it looks...

Ever since i switched to zen browser i hace not thought of coming back for a second.
- Yea Zen is amazing, especially the neat Workspaces feature.
  I'm still going back to Firefox because of tab groups.
- I tried it -> couldn't figure out how to get rid off vertical tabs -> uninstalled -> installed Librewolf

Amg I couldn't figure out how to collapse. I'm so happy rn. I've been containerising everything. It's so soothing.

So after I save and close a group... where do I find it?
- It's in the tab overview menu https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tab-overview-menu
  
  Thanks!

The lack of groups was the deal breaker for me, so after it rolled out to beta, I finally switched back to Firefox as my primary browser.
Last I tried, I don't think you could reorder or drag/drop groups and selecting multiple tabs doesn't result in "group tabs" in the context menu, but it is still decent enough.

Tab groups have always been there. They're called windows.
- Yeah, no. I'm not trying to keep track of 15 windows when I can make named groups to actually organize the various things I always end up coming back to
- Not when window history in only 3 windows long. That deletes 90% of my tabs instantly.
  Managing that would be a nightmare too. Good luck alt-tabbing to the one you want.
  
  Good luck alt-tabbing to the one you want.
  This is what workspaces are for.
- Not on mobile
- I'm sure that when they rolled out tabs in browsers, there were people saying "I just have multiple windows open and Alt-Tab between them. This 'tabs' thing is for people who don't know how to Alt-Tab."
- Eww

Maybe add some decent vertical tabs too?
- I've started using vertical tabs in Firefox as soon as I got the notification. I never thought I would have liked them so much.
  Why are you asking for decent vertical tabs? Are they inferior to some other browser you have in mind?
  
  I like Arc's user experience with vertical tabs. They are bigger, easier to organize and they are cleaner. Also, the sidebar toggle is hard to work with, ideally I would prefer the ability to toggle with a shortcut or reveal on hover.
  Aside Arc, Zen browser has a good vertical tab experience.
  Overall, I still main firefox for my personal browser, though it's UX is still lacking.
  
  I've been using the tree-style-tabs plugin for the last 4 years, because I like vertical tabs, and nesting it provides.
  But now that Firefox actually finally has proper vertical tabs, and tab groups, I can move away from tree-style-tabs (I don't use any of its other features).
  
  I wanted to like them but I dont know, I think they are more natural at the top still.
- What's wrong about it? I really like it.
- Vertical tabs are working great in FireDragon.
  
  I have tried Zen and I like it, I will give ForeDragon a spin, thanks 🙏
  
  Wait, how do you turn them on?

Now do it on mobile and I'll happily switch

This was the only thing keeping me on chrome at work. Tab groups are so nice for keeping resources related to specific projects together, especially if you’re juggling several features/fixes at the same time.

This is super neat, but I swapped to Floorp awhile back because I like the workspaces feature.
Super happy for folks who wanted this built-in tho.
- I really liked Floorp, but it kept breaking on work sites, so I had to switch back to FF. Super glad they are bringing this back.

Mh, I'll check out how it works but if I don't like it I can always stick with
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-groups/
(And obviously 👎 for the inclusion of useless AI bs, would be nice if you can turn that off?)
- The AI is local, privacy respecting and optional to use, ~~but I agree a config option to hide the button would be nice~~
  Edit: Apparently you can disable the feature
  
  You can disable it in about:config
  
  I'm not sure which button you're talking about, but if it's the one in the sidebar, click "Customise sidebar", and then uncheck "AI chatbot".
  
  Good news! Weirdly enough, I can't use tab groups (not able to drag tabs on top of each other, there is no option in right-click dialogue), though I am on FF 138.

What's the difference to the tab group extension?
- It actually works, without a bunch of insane weird behavior.
- It can work in the normal tab bar at the top

Anyone know if it will be integrated into Fennec as well? Or, like, soon?

Might switch back, use vivaldi for workspaces, I switched because it synced across devices but I never use that feature I just end up retyping everything if I need to open something.

Nice :)

- why "thank christ"? Was Christ advocating for tab groups?
  
  What, you don't remember that part of the Bible?
  Mozilla 11:28 - "Come to me, all of you who have 87 tabs open, and I will give you grouping."

ive seen this in opera, and instantly ran into the options to disable it. i donno how many tab you guys have in the browser, but may god forgive you all for using the browser wrong.
- Maybe you only have 300 or less but I typically have several windows open.
- I'm not usually one to really care about how others use their tools, but I agree with this completely. Tab hoarding is pathological.
  I get stressed out if I have enough tabs open in one session so that none of them can display any text... But I will still exit them all every time I exit the browser. What am I a maniac?

A second browser window is the real solution. Or simply accept the chaos.
- As if I wasn't already doing that lol I have 64 gigs of ram and I will use 64 gigs of ram!
  
  I haven't even gotten close... Maybe if I spin up several VMs that each have 8+GB allocated. But why would I do that.
- No chaos. Only Sidebery.
  
  They added sidebar tabs with this stuff too, doesn’t do a full tree structure and it needs some other work though.
- Oh man, thats even more chaos having a new window for a group of tabs.
  (Source: thats my daily experience)

I’ve never understood this. You guys know you can have multiple Firefox windows, right? What’s the point of tab groups when you can just group related tabs in a different window? Between multiple workspaces, multiple monitors, and multiple browser windows, I never feel the need to have more than 5-10 tabs open on any one of them at a time. More than that and I’m clearly doing something wrong and need to clean up anyway.
- Oh, here's the ol' "I have no use for this feature, and I can't see why anyone else would have one, either", so I get to check that off my bingo card.
  
  He’s just asking as in, maybe someone can share their perspective on why there may be an advantage to tab groups over windows. And to that end… isn’t there a certain amount of system resources that are increased more with a whole new window as opposed to just more tabs in groups? I would think it would consume more resources, albeit perhaps not to any severe degree. —?
  And to the actual question I think visually tab groups are easier to navigate than swapping back through windows. Task managers don’t really tend to present windows in a fashion where you could refer to them in context of one-another. Maybe some custom views that you can install in Linux but even then, ones I’ve tried still don’t quite give you a quick easy overview that shows enough detail. You pretty much see what program you’re swapping to, but not laid out in ways you can compare and choose on the fly the way you want when it’s the same application but different content. That’s my experience, anyhow.
- Switching between windows is far less fluid than switching between tabs.
  
  Then maybe switch to a better OS / Window manager?
- It’s called the ‘inner platform effect’. They are basically replicating parts of the underlying platform (the OS in this case) inside their own application, until the application turns into a platform itself, one crappier than the one below it. You see this happening with web browsers and ‘web apps’.
- You underestimate the tab hoarders.
  I'm also like you where I barely have more than a few tabs open. But I regularly witness people I know fill the tab bar until you can't read the first 3 letters of the title anymore.
- tabing through multiple windows of the same program is annoying, having one window with groups is way easier. plus 1-2 monitors is the norm, so sometimes its just a screen space issue.
  
  tabing through multiple windows of the same program is annoying,
  How is it any less annoying than tabbing through multiple browser tabs in the same window?
- Different strokes for different folks. I replied to the guy who replied to you and raised a couple of ideas that I think may distinguish the options to answer your question.

After everybody else yeah... woopie fkn doo. I say this as a LibreWolf user and using Firefox on alt PC.

- Folders as a to do mechanism sounds interesting.
  I'm wondering if a date-based system could work.

- Why this would be a reason? Librewolf will have tab groups too. They don't change the main structure, they just harden Firefox.

- The prototype scans open tabs locally, suggests topical names, and auto-bundles related pages. Because all processing happens on the user’s computer, the company says, neither raw content nor behavioral signals are uploaded to the cloud.
  "AI" is just a buzzword, this isn't chatbot nonsense as far as I can tell.
- If its called smart and uses Ai, then its advanced. We need Ai for renaming groups of tabs.