2012210 - switch to next tab and switch to previous tab are missing in about:keyboard

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Enrico]

Steps to reproduce:

• I've opened about:keyboard in Firefox Nightly (149.0a1)
• I've tried to add a custom shortcut for next tab (control + tab) and previous tab (control + shift + tab)

Actual results:

• I was not possible to add a shortcut for next tab, and previous tab

Expected results:

• Adding the shortcuts because these actions are the most commonly used in my browsing experience

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

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

[Negritas Sergiu, Desktop QA]

Hello! I have managed to reproduce the issue with firefox 149.0a1(2026-01-29) on Ubuntu 22.04

I will mark it as NEW in order to get our developers involved and provide a solution for it in further releases.
Have a nice day!

Comment 3

[Enrico]

Attachment: proposed_patch.diff

Comment 4

[Enrico]

Hi James,

after testing this other issue (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2012218) I've noticed that it is relatively fast to compile Firefox :)
So I've tested and added this part related to Next Tab and Prev Tab

Let me know if anything is missing in my proposed solution

Enrico

Comment 5

[Enrico]

Has anyone tested my proposed solution? Do you have any feedback about it?

Is anything else needed or have you found any downsides with that solution?

Enrico

Comment 6

[James Teh [:Jamie]]

Sorry for not responding to this sooner and thanks for working on it. Unfortunately, while your solution will appear to work on the surface, it will only partially work, but that won't be immediately obvious. The problem is that these commands aren't implemented using <key> elements at all. Instead, they are implemented in various bits of JS which call ShortcutUtils.getSystemActionForEvent to determine the key binding. That means that even though it looks like you're reassigning ctrl+tab and/or ctrl+shift+tab, it won't actually change those bindings; it will just add new ones. I filed bug 2035410 to deal with this, but it's going to be a pretty big lift to fix, so I don't think this is going to happen any time soon.

Tab switching is further complicated by the fact that there is a setting called "Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order" which significantly changes how ctrl+shift+tab behaves. When that setting is enabled, ctrl+shift+tab becomes "Show all tabs", so saying that it switches to the previous tab is inaccurate. It's unclear how we can express that in about:keyboard; we don't currently have a way to change the name of a shortcut on the fly based on a setting.

Comment 7

[nils]

It's unclear how we can express that in about:keyboard; we don't currently have a way to change the name of a shortcut on the fly based on a setting.

How about:

• Focus neighboring tab before/after currently selected
• Focus tab after/before currently selected
• Focus tab after/before current