Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

What's Mozilla doing to replace or replicate the Tab Groups functionality come November 2017?

more options

I have recently come to understand that, because you guys that make up Mozilla think Tab Groups is such a niche and insignificant feature, you have decided to kill it this coming November on the roll out of Firefox 57. And this comes a couple of years ago after you guys flipped this feature from being integrated to being add-on. However, according to Mozilla statistics (refer https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-groups-panorama/statistics/?last=30), a half a million people have downloaded the Tab Groups add-on! Further, based on current daily usage, Tab Groups is in the top 1% of all 18,839 FireFox add-ons! So, it seems to me that your characterization of Group Tabs as a niche and insignificant feature with few users is fake news. Both in my personal use and in my B2B market research business, I love using FireFox and Tab Groups in combination because that way I can organize and quickly access hundreds of active / open web pages all in 'real-time'. Now that you at Mozilla better appreciate the significance of the Tab Groups add-on, I trust you can come up with a quality answer for me and hundreds of thousands of Tab Group users who ask "what's Mozilla doing now to replace or replicate the Tab Groups functionality come November 2017?"

I have recently come to understand that, because you guys that make up Mozilla think Tab Groups is such a niche and insignificant feature, you have decided to kill it this coming November on the roll out of Firefox 57. And this comes a couple of years ago after you guys flipped this feature from being integrated to being add-on. However, according to Mozilla statistics (refer https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-groups-panorama/statistics/?last=30), a half a million people have downloaded the Tab Groups add-on! Further, based on current daily usage, Tab Groups is in the top 1% of all 18,839 FireFox add-ons! So, it seems to me that your characterization of Group Tabs as a niche and insignificant feature with few users is fake news. Both in my personal use and in my B2B market research business, I love using FireFox and Tab Groups in combination because that way I can organize and quickly access hundreds of active / open web pages all in 'real-time'. Now that you at Mozilla better appreciate the significance of the Tab Groups add-on, I trust you can come up with a quality answer for me and hundreds of thousands of Tab Group users who ask "what's Mozilla doing now to replace or replicate the Tab Groups functionality come November 2017?"

All Replies (2)

more options

Hi Tony, this support forum probably is not the best place to find out about what might be brewing for tabs groups in the future. We are mostly volunteers assisting users with the current release of Firefox, and not working on new or changed features.

Since tab groups were removed from Firefox a while ago, I do not imagine they will be added back. One question might be whether Firefox will gain any enhanced WebExtensions APIs that allow developers to create a similar extension compatible with Firefox 57 and later; I have no idea, but time appears to be running out.

You could try Reddit. For example, this was raised about a month ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/5z4ikd/what_are_the_alternative_to_tab_groups_which/

You also could try the Add-ons forum:

https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/c/add-ons

And the general input site is here:

https://qsurvey.mozilla.com/s3/FirefoxInput/

more options

One thing to keep an eye on is the Containers feature, which will let you create groups of tabs isolated from one another, e.g., work tabs, play tabs. An important goal is to allow you to have a separate set of cookies in each container, but at least one user has floated the idea of integrating some tab group features with Containers.