1803997 - Find a way to highlight recently closed windows to avoid the perception that tabs are lost

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: Session Restore, enhancement, P3)

Description

[brutalfreak]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:107.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/107.0

Steps to reproduce:

Forget previous tabs.

1. Activated add-on "Open previous windows and tabs"
2. I open any sites in tabs. One is enough.
3. I open private mode.
4. I close firefox opened in normal mode.
5. I close firefox opened in private mode.
6. I open firefox in normal mode.

Actual results:

And it's empty. An empty tab opens. The previous tabs are not open, their history is not there, it is impossible to restore them.

Expected results:

Previous tabs should open.
If you miss steps 3, 5. Then there is no problem, the previous tabs open.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Session Restore' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[brutalfreak]

On the linux, the steps are slightly different.

1. Activated add-on "Open previous windows and tabs"
2. I open any sites in tabs. One is enough.
3. I open private mode.
4. I close firefox opened in normal mode.
5. I open firefox in normal mode.

And it's empty.

Comment 3

[Hani Yacoub, Desktop QA]

I can't manage to reproduce the issue on my end.
Could you please try if the issue occurs in safe mode. Here is a link that can help you do that: 
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode
Thanks.

Comment 4

[brutalfreak]

Checked on different systems windows 10, windows 11. Including safe mode on the firefox. Always works.
An even shorter way for windows:

1. Activated add-on "Open previous windows and tabs"
2. I open any sites in tabs. One is enough.
3. I open private mode.
4. I close firefox opened in normal mode.
5. I open firefox in normal mode.

Tabs is empty.

Comment 5

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:dao, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 6

[Sam Foster [:sfoster] (he/him)]

I'm not clear on the STR here. Can you clarify?

(In reply to brutalfreak from comment #4)

1. Activated add-on "Open previous windows and tabs"

I assume this means you checked the "Open previous windows and tabs" box in about:preferences?

2. I open any sites in tabs. One is enough.
3. I open private mode.

Does this mean you opened a new private window?

4. I close firefox opened in normal mode.

Is this step closing the original non-private window, or shutting down the browser entirely?

5. I open firefox in normal mode.

Is this a new browser start up? What happened to the private window you just opened?

Comment 7

[brutalfreak]

Attachment: firefox-bug-prv.mkv

I recorded a video and attached it, which completely shows the process of recreating the problem.

Comment 8

[Sam Foster [:sfoster] (he/him)]

Thanks for the clarification. In these STR, the private window has remained open, so when you open a new Firefox (non-private) window, it doesnt actually start a new session which would then restore your previous tabs. Instead its opening a 3rd window. The window you closed should be in your "History" > "Previously closed windows" menu.

This is expected behavior, but I appreciate there is a lot of room for confusion here. Partly because a lot of people assume private windows are in their own session for the purposes of session restore - they are not. I'm not sure what to do to mitigate the perceived problem here - which I think boils down to the lack of discoverability of the recently closed windows. But I don't want to shut down any suggestions so I'll leave this open as an enhancement request for now.