Native Tab Grouping / More Customizable Tab bar

[Vinci480]

I'm personally a heavy tab user but have always wondered why there is almost no support for tab grouping or customization in the native tab bar in Firefox.

I think making it able to group like Google Chrome does for example or at least giving more access for extensions and add-ons would significantly improve the UI in that regard.

[Maverick74]

Hi @Jon 

I believe that, like @photodiode mentioned, one of the biggest problems is the lack of a decent (and Fast!) API.

I've been on Firefox since Phoenix/Firefox 1/1.5 days and, as soon as tab groups came along (way before Mozilla's Panorama), i've been a heavy user of it. I currently have 367 tabs (!) which i'll just have to do a close-all even knowing there are important tabs in it, because i have no way of organizing them.

I've tried Conex, Simple Tab Groups and more recently Container Tab Groups (just to mention a few...)

They all lack what one of Conex devs pointed out as a problem from Firefox itself: performance (because of the lack of a decent api)

It's impossible to accept the time it takes to Hide and to Show tabs (when you have lots of them, like me) everytime you change groups.

Container Tab Groups is a great addon: It does it's job well:
1) it isolates the groups
2) it auto-collapse the groups i'm not using (and keeps only the one i'm in loaded)
3) it allows for easy switch from the within the tab-bar

but then... the time it takes to close/hide a group and to open/show the other is unacceptable.
i don't know if its reloading all the group tabs or not... but it does take ages!!!

if it was not for that, addons could be the answer to this problem, but not like they're working currently! That's not an answer!

(as a side note: i don't believe we need any more likes to see this is easily the most wanted feature for Firefox)

[NightWalker]

The Arc Browser has been released to the masses, at least on Apple.  I'm a PC guy so I haven't used it yet.  Has anyone tried it?  I understand that tab management is central to Arc's approach.  I'm getting increasingly willing to move on from Firefox due to Mozilla's bizarre refusal to implement tab management, so I'm curious to hear more about this potential alternative.

[snoozerio]

@NightWalker TAB (hehe) is trying to say: "you don't know how to use bookmarks, we've deleted this feature. we know how to use browser better than you"

they don't have monetisation strategy, so they can die anytime. their video about money is strange, imho

[Intexella]

I love Firefox and have used it for school for the last 5 years but I have 20+ tabs open at a time for assignments and Chrome, and even Edge is better because of tab grouping, I love Firefox but it is such an inconvenience not to have tab grouping. Fully considering switching browsers because of it!

[DillonB07]

@NightWalker I've been using Arc for almost a year now and I love how it handles tab management. It does take a bit of getting used to though. Something like this will never be implemented in browsers like Firefox, Edge and Chrome as it's such a radical shift. You might be interested to know that Arc for Windows will be releasing this winter. Keep an eye on their YouTube channel if you want to see more about it (iirc they said they'd publish an update each month). They already have some info about the progress in a video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa_fNuaSE_I

You should take a look at some reviews of Arc - it's the best way to see how it works (without trying it yourself ofc)

Sorry for the ramble - hope that helped a bit

[Intexella]

Really hope to see this come to Firefox, considering switching because I used to on Chrome and it is so much easier!!!

[snoozerio]

@NightWalker they’re trying to tell you how to use browser. for example, bookmarks are hidden in chromium menu, so you should their way of working - favorite, pinned and today tabs. today tabs are automatically archived after some period, so you should pin them, which leads to always growing “pinned” section

[not_sarkazh]

Tab grouping, please.

I know there are a couple of posts about this but pleaaaseee give us the tab grouping in the same style as other browsers. To be clear I am using Simple Tab Groups and it is good, it gets the job done. On one hand I like the idea that the tabs disappear and let you focus on what you need to use but on the other I don't like it because I sometimes need to jump back and forth repeatedly, so I would love if the tab grouping like chrome would be integrated soon.

[W0lfff]

Hello,

I think tab groups is a critical feature that would improve my Firefox experience an immense amount. 

As the idea status is still set to "Exploring more" I would like to take the time to add my Ideas and reasons for this feature being an important part for the Firefox webbrowsing experience. 

Usecase:

Tab groups are a way to organize tabs when you have an immense amount of tabs open. Webbrowsing is a very big part of people's lives and there are lots of people who have multiple workflows open in a webbrowser at the same time.

Take for example looking through a documentation and at the same time keeping track of socials and mail. Combing through documentation can result in lots of relevant tabs being open, but also cluttering the top tab bar. Being able to organize all these documentation tabs into a group and collapse that group into a small bit on the tab bar would help a lot there in keeping the tab bar organized. 

Features:

The way other browsers do Tab Groups can still be improved, so over the standard features, like being able to open a tab group in a new window, there is room to add additional features to firefox's version of tab groups.

-Firefox View-
One of these features could be synced tab groups for Firefox View. As it could be useful to have a tab group that gets automatically synced across devices while the other tabs are not live synced but can still appear in the synced history. 

-The Sidebar-
Currently the firefox sidebar that you can open has History, downloads and synced tabs available. I think that having the active tabs in this panel aswell would be a very good addition. Where you'd be able to have a (simple) tree style view of your tab groups that you can collapse there. Making the active tabs visible in a different orientation than up top.  (Having the downloads section there aswell would be neat too, but that's an issue for a different suggestion)

And also, having this feature in the list view, where you can collapse groups to make it more clear to see everything would also be nice. 

-A way for storing tab groups-
In other browsers there is not really a way to store tab groups outside of keeping them active. I think that the best way to store a tab group would be making a bookmarks folder with all the tabs inside of it. This would also bring the option to open a bookmarks folder as a tab group with all the links inside of it as opened tabs. 
Additionally it would also be interesting to have a file format to store tab groups or bookmark folders so you can share them with people or between computers on a USB stick. 

-History-
And finally, I think being able to see if a tab has been inside of a tab group in the history would be a nice visual indicator aswell. Like giving a tab a special colored dot icon to indicate it was in a tab group along with other tabs. Or better, besides that also giving the option to restore the entire tab group would be good. However the tabs shouldn't be stored in the history as 1 tab group item, but still as individual closed tabs. or have the tab group be uncollapsable so you can still see the individual tabs.

-Nested Tab Groups-
So I don't know how do-able this feature is, as it might also become confusing for the user. But I still think that being able to store tab groups inside of other tab groups would increase the orginizational functionality of it. However I also realize that this might bring additional difficulty to setting up tab groups, so this would just be a nice to have, especially for if the sidebar would display active tabs.  

These are the things I think would make for a great browsing experience with tab groups. 
Thank you for taking the time to read through it.
-Wolf

[steel835]

I'm done, guys. This is a joke I can't take anymore, bye

[lokan]

Hello everyone,

Just a quick message to support this idea. Tab Grouping is really a basic feature and an important one nowadays. Most of us have to open multiple Firefox windows to get things done, while on Brave or Chromium you can use Tab Grouping AND vertical tabs and do so much more.

At this point, Firefox is way behind every browser in terms of user features and these ones (tab grouping and maybe vertical tabs) are a quick win to get our hearts back.

Sorry to say that, but Firefox was a major browser and is on of the little guys today. We are faithful to our favorite browser, until a certain point.

[BitSyndicate]

@JonAre there any updates concerning this topic. Since I really like the proposed feature and I think one is missing out without it. I also think that having the feature would be better than not having it and for some users to miss it. I find it rather annoying to use multiple windows for the same effect as it is rather clunky.

So what is the current status?

[orca9]

Grouped Tabs

In google chrome (ew), it is possible to group and colour code tabs. I think this would be a great organizational addition to firefox.

[T9]

1. Sync the groups across Firefox products including desktop and mobile.
2. List all groups on a home screen.

[LukeD]

This feature is crucial!

I am working with tab grouping on Edge and its very helpful.

If you would make this feature in Firefox and the future for workspaces that would be a game changer for firefox.