Firefox slaps itself on the back for finally adding tab groups and catching up with other browsers

The browser space, like so many other areas of software design, is one filled with inspiration and plagiarism. When one browser adds a new feature, you know it’s probably not going to be long before its rivals follow suit. Firefox is no different, but it likes to take its sweet time.

Mozilla has just launched a tab grouping option to its web browser, finally catching up with every other major browser in existence. Quite why it took so long to introduce what is such a common feature is not clear, but Mozilla has an awful lot to say about it.

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For many people, the advent of tabbed browsing was a blessing and a curse. While multiple tabs are more easily managed than multiple browser windows, the ease of use leads to complacency when it comes to closing them down or limiting how many new ones you open. Organizing tens, or even hundreds, of tabs into groups makes sense. Tabs are accessible and manageable, and the likes of Opera, Safari, Chrome and Firefox have provided tab grouping for a long time.

Despite this, Mozilla feels the need to introduce Firefox’s implementation of the feature as if it is something people will never have heard of.

Firefox Tab Groups are designed to give you more control, whether you manage thousands of tabs or prefer to keep just a few open.

Tab Groups add a layer of color-coded organization to your browser, making it easier to keep related tabs together. You can create groups for topics, projects or recurring tasks — like the news sites you read daily, ideas for a new woodworking hobby or research for an upcoming trip to Thailand.

In the self-congratulatory blog post about the launch of the feature -- which lands in the newly available Firefox 138 -- Mozilla provides incredibly detailed instructions about how to use this familiar organizational option.

No software update would be complete without a dash of AI, and here Mozilla does not disappoint -- for those on the cutting edge, at least:

To make it even easier over time, we’re exploring new AI-powered tools for organizing tabs by topic. You can try an early prototype today with on-device AI in Firefox Nightly, our next-generation browser for testing and development.

Watch this space to see what the next years-old feature to be copied by Firefox is!