Firefox Support Forum

If I am on a web site and click a link to another page on the same website Firefox opens a new tab rather than displaying it in the existing tab. How do I get Firefox to NOT do this?

Today when I close many tabs using control w firefox seems to randomly jump around when choosing which next tab to close

I wish to have firefox always close the adjacent tab to the tab I just closed

This should be the default behavior ... I do not see any setting for this ... is there an addon to do this ?

I am using the latest firefox on ubuntu

• • • UPDATE*** below answer for setting `browser.tabs.selectOwnerOnClose` has no impact on this

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.

Have I been hacked?? Restore Session not even avail on Menu bar. No computer crash or electric failure in last 24 hrs, but not a single one of my tabs are still open on my browser (30+) and no tab/page option as usual asking if I want to Restore my Session. What the !*& happened to my months of tabs? I do/did have the correct settings selected for Tabs to be restored. Oh MY GOD --this is a complete nightmare!! I'm the only user on this home desktop Mac. Please help. -Melanie

I've tried almost EVERYTHING offered to enable restore the "open previous windows and tabs" function ... to no avail. Very frustrating since I usually leave important tabs open for work. HELP!

Ok, I've resolved this in the past, several version of Firefox ago, under windows. Firefox crashes silently, open it again and no tabs are restored. Open firefox again and look in recently closed windows and the one with my tabs is not there, only little utility windows that are popped up when I log in at the coffee shop, so my recently closed windows are overwritten with windows with no tabs.

So I go to my profile sessionstore-backups folder and copy it to the desktop. I have 6 files, previous.jsonlz4, recovery.baklz4, and recovery.jsonlz4 at around 8 megs in size. I copied each to the folder one level up and renamed them sessionstore.jsonlz4, and each time restarted firefox. All that opens is a blank tabbed firefox window.

There was never an existing sessionstore.jsonlz4 file anywhere I could find, even with firefox closed, this file never appears anywhere I could find it. Searching files with Windows was also unsuccessful.

I feel like I have captured the files with my tabs, based on the date modified, several were from before the crash. Why can't I find a working tutorial on how to restore my tabs? Nothing I've found on the support site works though I follow the directions exactly.

Thanks

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,

Everytime I have to close my pc with updates or if I just close/ restart it or if it crashed and I have to restart everything, all my most recent tabs (when I do restore last session) are gone but I get all the tabs back from weeks or even months ago. It's very annoying especially I do research and study. I really don't understand. It's like going back in time every time it starts again  :( What is happening ?

Thank you for your help ! Vanessa

I have just started using Firefox and ticked that every internet tab is Firefox but every time I click new tab, it states "search with google or enter address" I cannot get into about:config to then get to browser.newtabpage.pinned How do I get rid of this Google message?

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.

Firefox has started hiding all tabs in a window except the active tab. This has happened in two different windows. I have no idea how to hide tabs and don't want to. How can I unhide the tabs. When I try to do it one by one, the first tab rehides when the 2nd one appears. Can I unhide multiple tabs at once? Do I have to unhide them one by one, and if so how? How do I stop Firefox from hiding tabs?

MSN is my home page. When I open Firefox, it goes to MSN as it should, but then the right and left arrow keys to view the articles do not work. The arrows will not go to the next page, nor go back to the previous page. Is this a MSN or Firefox problem?

For ages I've had my tabs automatically restored when opening Firefox. But as of the last few days it won't. The old links are saved so I can restore them one by one through history but that's not automatic. And if I click on restoration in History it will bring up a whole bunch of old tabs not neccessarily from the last session.

I'm on the same computer as I've been for over a year, so I don't know what what the problem is. I've searched on it and tried to re-check the box for this function. But it won't apply...

I was running 8 Windows with about 12 tabs per Window. AND I had it set to Continue Where You Left Off, so that each time I closed and launched FireFox, ALL Windows with ALL Tabs would open. No problem. Easy.

This morning, Firefox crashed and LOST EVERYTHING. Why did it happen? And how do I get them back?

Jev

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?

Every time I close my Firefox browser, the same tabs are restored after reopening the browser. I don't want that to happen. How can I get them to close completely? I'd still like the option to restore the tabs but not every time.

How can I import or to which folder do I import bookmarks so they show up in the shortcut rows in a new tab? I'm trying to get away from Opera but I love the shortcuts displayed on a new tab. I tried copying all the appropriate bookmarks to the bookmarks menu folder and why they are in the folder they dont display in the shortcuts.

The imagine shows where I want to import to.