So they're reintroducing a feature in 2025 that they added to Firefox in 2010 and subsequently removed in 2013. Such progress. Much wow.
Firefox
A place to discuss the news and latest developments on the open-source browser Firefox
smart tab groups, a new AI-powered feature that suggests names and groups based on the tabs you have open.
Yeah sure ok. Did the community ask for this too?
I mean, why not?
They integrated accessibility focused, local, AI pretty well.
Loads of folks bitched about it because they were triggered by "AI", but it's essentially invisible, as it should be.
I hate naming things, that's actually something AI is good at, hell yeah, let it name my shit for me please.
Then again, these communities are always full of Debby downers who hate on everything.
[Dr. Who meme format]
Is AI bad?
It Depends. Large corporate AI hosted at a data centre that consumes a nuclear reactor's worth of power and a lake's worth of water for cooling for the purpose of generating slop stolen from Artists and Writers? Yes.
Locally run embedded AI designed for a specific task to automate small processes or enhance the UI experience with little cost to local computing resources because it's been properly optimised? No.
I don't care about AI when it's doing minor things like this it's when they're shoving it down our throats and we don't want it.
For one second I thought Mozilla might have made something that wasn't anti-feature... But OF COURSE it's going to need to have AI 😑
Hoping someone might be able to help me out with this info, I've tried looking and can't find a solid answer.
When you use the "Save and close group" feature of tab groups, do they
-
Stay forever, no matter if you close Firefox, restart your pc, not used that group in months etc.
-
Allow an unlimited, or at least a high number, of saved and closed tab groups.
I mainly ask because it specifically puts closed and saved tab groups in a section called "recent tab groups" which sounds suspiciously temporary.
ok, mozilla is at least doing stuff we want along with ai garbage now.
AI garbage seemingly pays the bills...
Seems like it creates bills, but also has enough hype behind it to generate investment/donation interest.
At least the AI runs locally, as opposed to sending everything to someone else's computer for processing. Local translation in Firefox actually works quite well.
"You asked, we built it" --> "People keep shitting on us for our terrible decisions... Quick let's do something people actually want to compensate ! Wait let's also slap AI on it, I'm sure everyone will love that" (Mozilla being Mozilla I guess...)
People love to hate on Mozilla without knowing shit. Some of it is literally 4Chan grade manipulation as well.
Like the whole ToS debacle. People just aren't interested in truth just rage 24/7
Shit, I remember seeing requests for tab groups for like 20 years under an assortment of names and descriptions. Neat to see. Useless for me, but neat to see.
Next they'll implement DownThemAll natively. Really putting their finger on the pulse of 2008.
This is a nice feature when you have a group of multiple sites you need quick access to on the regular. For me, I manage around 12 websites in three environments ; dev, test, and prod. Being able to group the websites by environment keeps things organized and somewhat readily available at two clicks (maybe three if you count collapsing a group before opening another group).
I had to enable them: about:config
-> browser.tabs.groups.enabled
-> true
Not something I'll ever use, but cool regardless
I already used it three times accidentally while rearranging tabs. Mostly annoying, I haven't used them yet
So uhh, when are you introducing PWAs and easier profile management?
Isn't profile management introduced like right now in the same release?
Now, the team is experimenting with smart tab groups, a new AI-powered feature that suggests names and groups based on the tabs you have open.
Off course, they found a way to integrate more Ai features.
Because you know it’s really hard naming your group yourself
Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the inclusion of some small AI feature is what justified the rest of this work being done. As in, someone got approval for tab groups only because they were smart enough to describe it as “AI powered tab groups“. Just speculation
Was I signed up for some beta? I've had firefox groups for a few weeks now.
And holy shit do I need em.
Desktop only? Sigh...
Yeah pretty sad. It would be a much more useful feature for me on mobile.
On desktop, I usually just create a new window for different types of stuff.
No easy way to organize my infinite tabs on mobile (as far as im aware).
Chromium browsers on mobile do this, but it's also a bit weirdly complicated/frustrating to work with at times, I hope of Firefox get to it, they can make it super simple.
Noooo it has AI garbage, what the hell.
I really need this feature, I have over 500 tabs open right now, I just hope it works well.
I feel like this feature is a good idea that has come too late for me. I already "group" stuff via windows. That'll be a hard habit to break.
Do you use an add-on to prevent that from wiping out all but one window's worth of tabs when you close them? That's what originally made me get a tab grouping addon, after losing a ton of tabs when I broke some out into their own window and then later closed the main tab window before the secondary one. Realized immediately what happened but it was already too late to save that entire generation of precious tabs. Who knows what articles I didn't feel like reading at the time but was totally going to read later I lost forever.
Ctrl+Q terminates the whole program at once and you don't lose any windows.
Oh btw, just like Ctrl+shift+t reopens closed tabs, so Ctrl+shift+n reopens whole windows, with all tabs.
All that article and they don’t say how to use it it turn it on, smh.
am i the only one who like, closes all his tabs when done? i have tabs I'll come back to when working on something not when it's all finished i close it all the fuck down.
i know 'am i the only one' is a cliche n shit but I'm starting to think i really am. everyone i know has all these tabs open all the time.
Please help me understand how to use tab groups and how to use bookmarks and why they are different things.
Tab groups are built for open tabs, bookmarks are built for revisiting things. Their use cases are quite different in my opinion.
Ok but when do you make the decision to invest in organizing open tabs into groups versus bookmarking them or just moving them to a dedicated window. When do you close the tab or tab group -- only when the initiative is over? Do you "archive" those tabs as bookmarks?
And then there's the profile variable
Me using the Tiled Tab groups add-on for 2 years now... Good-morning
This is mostly useless to me; I already enforce all tabs into unique containers to isolate browsing and website contexts from one another; while still allowing me to make exceptions to the rule and "unbreak" things if that's causing an issue, but still keeping things isolated from the rest of the browsing.
As for Tab Management; I use two windows and a plugin; Tab Stash Plus; which collapses tabs I stash into a bookmark.
Every so often when I reach a critical mass of tabs I personally go through them and play "Keep/Toss" with more odds on Toss. Only useful tabs get stashed and are then searchable from the plugin.
In general; since this feature now presents a possibility of an extremely UNWANTED AI integration I will be setting the config to off and leaving it off...using a relevant config policy tool or plugin to enforce this to off if needed. I hate AI features that I didn't ask for and this one definitely doesn't seem like it's going to be helpful nor compatible with my current workflow.