Mozilla is considering introducing vertical tabs to Firefox

One thing I love about Microsoft Edge is the option that allows you to access tabs from the sidebar. It looks like Mozilla could add support for vertical tabs in Firefox.

Introduced in Edge about a year ago, this option lets you hide the tab bar that normally appears at the top of the window. Enabling this feature creates a sidebar with icons for each tab. Clicking on one of the icons switches to the corresponding tab. So you get the same experience but with a more compact interface.

If you expand the side panel, you'll find it's a more efficient way to manage your tabs. Most websites have a lot of white space on either side of the screen, and in my opinion a vertical tab bar provides a better experience as it looks cleaner. Users with large or ultrawide monitors may find vertical tabs to be a blessing.

Vertical tabs have been a commonly requested feature by users of other browsers, especially within the Mozilla Firefox community, since Microsoft introduced the feature. As far as I know, there is only one other browser with this feature, Vivaldi. To enable the side panel, go to Settings > Tabs page and set the tab bar position to the left. You need to reduce the panel to its minimum size to get the vertical tab experience in Vivaldi.

Mozilla can bring vertical tabs to Firefox

Users voted in the Mozilla Crowdicity community to ask for vertical tabs to be added to Firefox Provides vertical tabs. The unresponsive feedback portal is buzzing with activity. Mozilla's product community manager finally responded to the request with good news. He wrote that since the request had become a top idea in the community, it was reviewed by developers at Mozilla. They are looking for ways to improve tab management and are investigating the possibility of adding support for vertical tabs in Firefox. Of course, this does not mean that this feature must be added, which is why I wrote "could" instead of "will".

We don’t know what Mozilla’s Vertical Tabs implementation will look like. Want it to be more than just an auto-hiding sidebar, we need to hide the tab bar from the top. For now, I think users can be happy that this option is being explored and keep our fingers crossed.

Other Ways to Add Vertical Tabs in Firefox

Firefox has a lot of customization options, and there are add-ons that let you view and manage options from the sidebar cards, the most popular of which is of course Tree Style Tab. There are other options, such as Tab Center Reborn, and personally, I like the simplicity of Vertigo Tabs.

But none of these extensions have the ability to hide the standard tab bar. why is that? Because, like other similar programs, Firefox has a proper API that allows users to adjust the interface to their liking. The other side of the coin is that these APIs are limited and extensions cannot access or modify certain parts of the GUI due to certain limitations. These rules are designed to protect users from malicious add-ons that could otherwise wreak havoc or hijack the browser.

Right now, these restrictions are limited to add-ons, which means there are other ways to modify the browser. Many Firefox users rely on custom CSS code to change the browser's theme, new tab page, and more. So, yes, you can use one of these scripts to edit userChrome.css, hide the tab bar, and use an extension to access the tabs from the side panel. This is a vertical tab script created by a user from a website that provides more custom CSS themes for Firefox. Most, if not all, of these scripts are open source. I recommend being careful when modifying the script, you may want to back up your tabs, sessions, and data just in case something goes wrong and you have to reset the browser.

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