1933522 - List all tabs button re-appears by itself

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect, P3)

Description

[James Heppell [:FormularSumo]]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:133.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/133.0

Steps to reproduce:

Remove the "List all tabs" button by right clicking, remove from toolbar

I'm using the latest Firefox Flatpack (133.0) on the latest KDE Neon (6.2.3)

Actual results:

List all tabs button is removed from toolbar, but after awhile it re-appears. I'm unable to figure out exactly when this happens (it doesn't seem to consistently happen after restarting Firefox or the device, or even after updates), but since the ability to remove the button was added a little over a month ago - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1918681 - I've had the button re-appear for me around 20 times, each time removing it again.

Expected results:

List all tabs button does not re-add itself to the toolbar

Comment 1

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

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

Comment 2

[James Heppell [:FormularSumo]]

I have since figured out why/when this happens. The button re-appears when hidden tabs are created, which happens quite often with the tab groups extension that I use (whenever I close a tab group). I guess this is the intended behaviour, but it would be good if there was a way to stop this happening, at least for users who understand the risks of not being altered about it.

I also then tried moving it to the overflow menu, but even there it gets moved back to the top of the title bar when tabs are hidden, which also feels like too much to me.

Comment 3

[Ardelean Oana, Desktop Test Engineering [:oardelean]]

Hello, thank you for the bug report!

• Could you please list the tab groups add-ons that you use?
• Does this happen when Firefox is in troubleshoot mode? Here’s a link on how to enable it: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/diagnose-firefox-issues-using-troubleshoot-mode#w_how-to-start-firefox-in-troubleshoot-mode

Comment 4

[James Heppell [:FormularSumo]]

The tab groups extension I'm using is called Simple Tab Groups. I can't reproduce it in troubleshoot-mode, but I'm not sure how I'd create hidden tabs without an extension. Presumably if I were to, the same behaviour would take place.

Comment 5

[Ardelean Oana, Desktop Test Engineering [:oardelean]]

Thank you.
Managed to reproduce this issue (with Simple Tab Groups add-on) on:

• Firefox Nightly 135.0a1;
• Firefox 134.0b4;
• Firefox 133.0;

Tested and reproduced on:

• Windows 10;
• Ubuntu 22;
• macOS 14;

Setting as NEW so the developing team can have a look.

Comment 6

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Hi James,

You're right - this is intentional behaviour so that users can't get into a situation where an extension has hidden a tab and the user has no way of accessing it. Right now, we consider the list-all-tabs button as "likely not visible" when it's pinned to the overflow menu (but not when it's there due to the natural overflowing of the window).

I think we need the WebExtensions folk and maybe UX to weigh in here on whether or not we want to alter this behaviour further. Perhaps when the list-all-tabs button is intentionally pinned to the overflow menu, we'd also consider that "visible"? What do you think, Will?

Comment 7

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

(In reply to Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️) from comment #6)

I think we need the WebExtensions folk and maybe UX to weigh in here on whether or not we want to alter this behaviour further. Perhaps when the list-all-tabs button is intentionally pinned to the overflow menu, we'd also consider that "visible"? What do you think, Will?

Yeah, that sounds good to me. I'll ask our Product/UX folks.