Firefox Support Forum

Hi, it has occurred to me that I lose the browsing history of tabs that were open for a long time. By browsing history i mean the sites that show up in "Go back one page" arrow. The issue is that after a website has been open for some time (this seems to be in range of days, perhaps weeks) the browsing history of that tab is forgotten and the Go back one page arrow goes blank. I would like to be able to keep this history for eternity, is there any way to enable that?

To be clear, I use the feature to save tabs of my previous sessions and also the Simple Tab Groups extension.

Thanks in advance, Alex

I understand that as outlined [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pinned-tabs-keep-favorite-websites-o...], pinned tabs aren't designed to be closed with ctrl+w.

I would still like that behavior though, is there a way to either assign a shortcut to that funktionality (one that I would just also map to ctrl+w) or remove the protection altogether?

I know that you can change a lot of thing sin about:config, so I have hopes that there might be something for this as well. Alternatively, do you maybe know of a plugin to allow this?

What wouldn't be useful are solutions requiring additional actions (Just unpin first, just use MMB, here is a plugin to give you a shortcut to unpin etc).

If it is just not possible right now, is it likely to become an option later on? If not it seems like a useful feature request. I understand that the current default behavior makes sense, but part of what makes firefox great and different is its customizability, so having what I want be a hidden about:config toggle feels very on brand (or even a setting in the normal settings menue - but even there it might be too niche and cause bloat).

I'd like to turn off the recommended articles that I see when opening new tabs. I find them to be quite bothersome, and the link pocket provides to learn more about this features a nonexistent article on how to disable these recommendations. Could you help me disable these?

Hi, Since few weeks ago, firefox never restores my previous tabs/session (I lost a year worth of tabs..), no matter what/how I tried, it keeps starting with a clean session, not even the history in there. I tried: Deleting profile, creating a new one Resetting Firefox Fully delete FF and delete the profile folder Heck, I even used librewolf, and even FF on linux and also Librewolf, same issue!!

I notice this happen once I enable the sync (login to my account), there's no setting in my account says to never restore the session or something similar.

How to solve it?! I need to have the tabs open again..

Is it normal that we should install an extension to be able to open a specific url when opening a tab. That don't work because of x-frame options.

We already can add a custom url for new windows, so why not for tabs.

Firefox is taking weird directions.

When I click a link either form a web page or from an email I get a whole new window rather than a new tab in the existing Firefox window. This new window is stripped back without the usual menu of options at the top. Is this EDGE taking over my life? I have Firefox as my default browser.

Hi,

Firefox = 121.0.1 64-bit Win10 = 22H2 (19045.3930)

Not for the first time but the 3rd in the past few months I was closing a tab in Firefox and my PC immediately reset. No warning, just straight to blank screen as soon as I closed a tab (I had 4 open). Next thing I knew it was going through re-boot. No crash report in Firefox.

This last time I had Facebook open, I had a video in Facebook popped-out, it had finished playing and I went to close the FB tab.

Ian.

Why am I losing my open tabs. I have it set to open where left off.

This has happened about 3 times recently. It is a huge inconvenience as I have multiple windows with a lot of tabs open in each. It is too active and difficult to save them all as bookmarks. I thought if you were signed into your account, that would automatically remember what your open tabs were.

I think it has something to do with clearing history. A couple times that function seemed to stall. Like this time. This doesn't happen all the time though. I can clear data & history, have all my tabs sitting there, and they are restored when I go back in, as usual.

I am going to have to change browsers if this continues because I need all my working tabs, many which I will not even remember, to get back to manually.

I just turned sync on (was reluctant to do that as I don't know all the specifics how it works). My mobile phone open tabs did not wipe out as I feared probably because looks like I'm not signed in there. Might have lost everything there also. But does having sync turned on keep things stored in your account so it can't get wiped out?

I accidentally closed both of my Firefox windows with an "x" and the rebooted my computer. After the reboot there is nothing under "History"->"Recently closed windows" and "Recently closed tabs". Is there any way to get my windows back?

I am in the habit of generating related tabs across several windows. Say, 5 windows and there might be 13 tabs that I want to organize onto one, new, window. How can I do this?

All of a sudden, I can no longer open new tabs in Firefox just by clicking the top bar (sorry, don't know how to describe this: the space that sits just below the line with 'File', 'Edit', 'View', 'History', etc. (Menu bar?) Formerly, when I had a tab open I used to be able just to click that line and a new tab would open. To open a new tab now I have to look to the right of the screen, and press the '+' button (Open a new tab Control+ 1) that appears in that same area just below the that is there. Not nearly as convenient. Please tell me how to fix this as simply as possible (I am not very computer literate). I have done nothing to change anything in the Firefox settings, so don't know why this happened all of a sudden. Very frustrating. My bookmarks all disappeared too, by the way, thoughI figured out how to resstore them to top of screen. I am using Windows 10 Thanks in advance, A frustrated Cynthia

New Firefox is making me angry everytime I use it. New tabs are doing what they want, they never open near the site that i'm watching. Sometimes they open in the middle of other tabs, sometimes at the end. That is so problematic and frustrating that i would download an opera if i can't change it. I use about 90 tabs and that's the way I'm using Internet, I won't change it. I have searched in settings but there is nothing. Old mozilla haven't done this. Can someone help me?

FF doesn't reliably open my last session. It used to but for nearly 18 months now it has become hit and miss. I have FF docked on my taskbar (Win 7 sp1) when I click it some times it opens all my tabs (I have it set to do that) but more frequently it doesn't and just opens one tab. Usually I catch it and in history select the tab showing many other tabs and I get it all back, but this doesn't always work like today, no option to do that because there's nothing there. When is it likely to be fixed, I've been complaining about this for months. I've even suggested FF collects a stack of last sessions (say 20) each time a session is closed and have a fixed entry for that in the menu, but nothing seems to change. I'm heartily sick of it, it's such a basic requirement of any browser and yet with FF it's just a pain in the neck.

Hi.

This message has three sections: little background, little rant, and little help from my friends.

Little background: I use PCs since Commodore 64, and internet since dial-up modems. Apart for some curiosity attempts with other browsers, I always used Firefox. Back then you either could do some DIY or you were done for. So, I am not a noob. And yet I am not a programmer, and do not have to damn be in order to use a damn internet browser. I have no words to express how negatively the choice of changing the behavior of the X button, to make it disappear when a certain amount of tabs are open, affects my user experience with Firefox. I tolerated it version after version. Found mentions of about:config tweaks which never worked. Found mentions to css codes which seemed so complicated that I just gave up (I also don't have much capacity for such things atm). I was ready to get rid of Firefox today after all this time of being loyal. I would have, if it was not for Cor-El. (Cor-El you can put this testimonial on your website if you'll ever start a consulting business).

Little rant: I SO SO SO SO SO SO MUCH HATE bad UX Design! And the FIRST definition of bad UX Design is when a designer imposes their own tastes and preferences on the users, or makes assumptions (based on their own usage) about how users would do things. I don't give the lesser s... if Firefox's UX Designers usually only have few tabs open, or don't mind clicking on a tab to make the damn X button appear, or would gladly abandon their beloved ergonomic mouse to buy a standard one with a mid button just to close tabs, of whatever the f... was going on in their minds when they decided to remove such an ESSENTIAL FEATURE!!! This change is WRONG! Nobody asked for it, nobody wants it, nobody likes it. The X button was not disturbing anybody. WHY must we tweak some f... about:config setting or ask in this Community for some css code to get back what should have never been removed!!!??? DO YOUR JOB, which is to make OUR user experience better, OUR, not yours!!!

Little help from my friends: After quick searches over a long time where I couldn't dedicate more resources to this, I came here determined to dig deep to find a solution. And I've found a few posts with answers from Cor-El. I followed his instructions in THIS post to configure a css file with the code that he provided in THIS other post (because I thought I didn't want the delay offered by the code he provided in the former post). Problem solved.

Now a question for Cor-El: Is it just me or the solution with the two browser.tabs settings does not work? It's the first thing I tried. I went from 50/50 to 200/200 to see if size matters. But no chance. Maybe there is another setting that must be activated for these to have effect? Or was their effect on the X button removed in newer Firefox versions (like the UX Destroyers really hate us)? Btw, I wanted to see how the delay thing would work, so I tried the code you gave in the first post, and it didn't have any effect. Whereas the code you modified for a guy in THIS post works perfectly. What could be the reason?

And 2 requests: - can you make some guide or pinned post about this, where you put together the info you gave in different posts? Something with your super easy instructions how to create a css file, and the two codes (with and without delay). And if the browser.tabs solution can still work, that too. All info in one single place, easy to find. - can you point me to a (possibly ADHS friendly) resource to more css codes for other useful tweaks, and to an explanation of what all about:config settings do? I like to tweak things to my needs. But I get overwhelmed if I have to read through tons of material. Thanks :)

Bonus Material, Little Rant part 2: It's good and nice that people help each other and I am thankful, but it does not need to come to this. Sure, I've read that the (ridiculous) reason behind the choice of making the X button disappear was to avoid accidental closure of tabs. But WHY taking for granted that we are some !diots who can't even use a mouse properly? And even if it happens once, we can still go to the damn "recently closed tabs"! But no, they had to remove the X button for all of us, to prevent a bunch of !%#@! from maybe sometime accidentally closing a tab. Why not just adding an option in the settings (NOT in some hidden "about:config") to let us choose if we want to have the damn button or not? Btw, a lot of these about:config tweaks are really useful and not dangerous at all and should imo be included in the normal settings. Keeping things simple and tidy does NOT mean reducing options. Unless you're Apple.

Please God-zilla let these [censored content] UX Designers read this post.

Amen and happy new Xear.

Hello! Can you help me sort out a little problem? I am reaching out to seek assistance with a specific issue I am encountering in the Firefox browser.

In my previous browser, when opening new tabs, they were considered active even if I did not immediately switch to them. This behavior allowed me to open multiple tabs, for example, by using the mouse wheel to open several videos from the main YouTube page. Subsequently, when closing the main page, the videos would be available in the order they were opened, facilitating a seamless viewing experience.

Upon transitioning to Firefox, I have attempted to configure the browser to replicate this behavior using the Sidebery extension. However, even with the extension, new tabs are not recognized as active unless I explicitly switch to them, making it challenging to maintain the desired tab activation order.

I have explored various settings and experimented with the Sidebery extension but have not been successful in achieving the desired result. In contrast, the Yandex browser, with the "Switch to the previous active tab when closing a tab" option enabled, behaves in the manner I am accustomed to.

Could you please provide guidance on how I can configure Firefox to consider new tabs active immediately upon opening, regardless of whether I switch to them immediately?

I added pictures to make it clearer what I'm talking about.

Thank you for your time and assistance.