Why can't I save Tab Groups from one session to the next? When I restart, tab groups are cleared.
Why can't I save Tab Groups from one session to the next? Is there a way to save Tab Groups from the last session to the next time I start up? Mark Kipperman
Opaite Mbohovái (20)
Yeah, if this is the way it's supposed to work its a useless and, dare I say, stupid "feature". Wouldn't the whole point of this be to have quick access to groups of pages. If I have to select them each time to create the group what is it doing for me?
I agree, ncramer. Apparently you have to set up the group at each session. That is not a quick or particularly easy process. You drag, you position, you go up to a little box in the corner and you name it. Then you do it all over again next time you start up. This saves no time at all: I can just open another window and put all my new tabs on that, which is much faster. One could keep FF running all the time. But even then, one crash and restart, and you have the pain of setting up the groups all over again. So, dumb indeed.
Advice here for FF 4.1!
+1. This feature should be called "tab losing," not grouping. Initially i wanted to take advantage of it and it was nice--I have a group for work, a group for school, a group for an organization i'm working with, a group for my band, a group for distractions... I could see this doing nice things for me...
but instead the grouped tabs become basically invisible background clutter that disappears when i close the window. Also they have no relation to the windows which is a bit confusing.
App tabs and Tab Groups (Panorama) are stored as part of the session data in the file sessionstore.js in the Firefox Profile Folder
So you can't use Delete browsing, search and download history on Firefox to clear the "Browsing History" if Firefox is closed because that prevails and prevents Firefox from opening tabs from the previous session.
My computer restarted when it was out of internet range. So Firefox opens and says "not responding." When I get to internet available area, surprise! all my tab groups are gone and I am unable to restore session, tabs, window--anything. Because it already tried to open once. Recently closed tabs? Nope, not there either. Tab history? Sure, I can go back through 4 months of tabs and waste my time looking for the ones I had open. What's the point of taking a LOT of time to organize, label and sort through my tabs if there is no permanency to it?
It is possible that there is a problem with the files sessionstore.js and sessionstore.bak in the Firefox Profile Folder.
Delete the sessionstore.js [2] file and possible sessionstore-##.js [3] files with a number and sessionstore.bak in the Firefox Profile Folder.
- Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Open Containing Folder
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox
Deleting sessionstore.js will cause App Tabs and Tab Groups and open and closed (undo) tabs to get lost, so you will have to create them again (make a note or bookmark them).
See also:
Thank you for answering, but... what? In layman's terms, it looks like you told me to delete the files that will hold my stored tabs, but write down the tabs because they will be deleted. My tabs are already deleted; and now I am deleting the files that may store any future tabs? Will those files be recreated somehow? They don't seem to be older, stored files because when I went to the two files you mentioned above through "Open Containing Folder," they are both time stamped in the last hour. Next, I tried to follow the link you gave, but I'm not sure what that was supposed to show me because I get this:
ERROR The requested URL could not be retrieved While trying to retrieve the URL: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox The following error was encountered:
Connection Failed
The system returned:
(110) Connection timed out
The remote host or network may be down. Please try the request again. Your cache administrator is root. Generated Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:25:26 GMT by sunrise-squid.mz.osuosl.org (squid/2.5.STABLE11)
I cannot find the referenced folder. In ~/library/Mozilla/Profiles there are no such files, on a Mac. Perhaps these are Windows files. This does not solve the problem. Can you help?
You can use this button to go to the Firefox profile folder:
- Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Open Containing Folder
Sorry, Cor-el, but that is not a button.
When you save a group of tabs, even if you do not close Firefox, if you just close a window and open a new window with Home tabs, the previous group is not saved. There seems to be no way to just preserve a Group over time. What is the use of a feature like that?
Show me where it says, "Save Group As." All you have to do to make a group disappear is close a window. Open another window and you have new tabs.
Oh, and I can find the Profiles folder in ~/library/Mozilla just fine. But there is nothing in there resembling what you are pointing to. It is called "Profiles" by the way, so I wonder if you are on anything like a Mac system. And Spotlight does not find any such folder.
Actually, Cor-el, this is what the Help says about saving tabs: "To get your tabs and windows back from a previous session, you should close Firefox from the menu: On the menu bar, click on the Firefox menu and select Quit Firefox. If you close each window or tab, only the tabs in the final window that you close are available when you restart Firefox. "
This is odd, and hardly helpful as a feature. The Tab Groups should work like Bookmarks, only grouped ones. I never use the feature.
Yes, using Firefox > Quit Firefox is more important because on a Mac you can close all open windows and still have the Firefox menu bars because Firefox is still running. If you close Firefox in that case then your windows won't be restored although you may see them under History Recently Closed Windows.
With all due respect, cor-el, I do not think you get my point. If you close FF using "Quit" you still lose your groups. FF will open with your home pages. They will be the only "groups" left. You can set "Start with last tabs" in Preferences, but you then do not have your home page to start.
For example, say I want to group three tabs of news, then three separate tabs of weather. Fine. I quit FF. When I relaunch, they are gone.
The way Tab Groups ought to work is that I can go to the group any time I launch, and FF will keep the Tabs together. Like Safari's Favorites in a way. But it could be even more useful, because you could SAVE different interest groupings. So even if you do Quit, you come back and there are stored groups of Tabs, just as there are stored Bookmarks.
I hate to be contentious about this, but it does not appear that this feature does anything like this. It would not be difficult to design, and it would be a killer feature if you could get it working.
I am a long-time user and admirer of Firefox, and I mean no criticism. I would like to see it be even better, and here we are in Version 11 and we still do not have a very useful Tabs feature,
Best, Mark
Did you make sure that you do not run Firefox in permanent Private Browsing mode?
To see all History and Cookie settings, choose:
- Firefox > Preferences > Privacy, choose the setting Firefox will: Use custom settings for history
- Deselect: [ ] "Always use private browsing mode"
You also can't use Clear Recent History to clear the Browsing History when you close Firefox.
See also:
Seems to me most of the problems people are having with the grouped tabs function is because it is tied to the history file. A lot of us are deleting the history when we exit the program, and we would like to keep that function. Group tabs should be stored in their own file or a section of the session file that does not get deleted with the rest of the history.
For now I am getting around this problem by grouping tabs in a file folder in my bookmarks file. Then I just open all the tabs in that folder at once. This is not nearly as convenient or easy to set up as the group tabs function would be, but it gets around the problem of the tab groups disappearing when you delete the history.
Will this feature ever be made into what everyone wants??
Edpayne, No, I do not think that most people even understand what the feature should be. And most users will not find that it is at all obvious what it does do (which is not much). Tab groups should be like bookmarks, permanent and grouped. But there seems no real move to implement this. The endless FF updates add security features, which is nice. But they do not really alter the features much. I sense a lack of thoughtfulness here, which is unusual for FF and Mozilla. Mark
The strange thing is, someone obviously spent a ton of time on the tab group interface, and for what? So we can have another eye candy "feature" that nobody uses to file along with personas and further bloat this monstrosity that was supposedly conceived of to counter Mozilla's feature creep?
The tab groups are so close to being extremely useful, but instead we get a pretty looking interface that falls short of doing anything productive. Not that anyone even knows that the tab groups exist, other than the few people who accidentally stumbled upon them by clicking a tiny little arrow icon in the menu bar. Not that they'd use them anyway once they realized they have to click that tiny icon every time they want to switch groups, and the people who bother to memorize yet another (non-configurable) keyboard shortcut will get to spend an hour setting up their groups only to have them disappear.
There is virtually no integration with the browser interface. There is no indication of which group you are currently working with, or what other groups are open, how many groups exist, or even if there are any groups open at all. Switching tasks, or even just seeing a "taskbar", requires essentially leaving the browser and launching into a completely separate full screen interface, which is a giant workflow speed bump. They should rename it the Firefox Metro start screen.
If only someone would come up with some other way of switching between tasks that wasn't so disengaging. Something that would show you at a glance what tasks were open, and let you switch between them with merely a click. Maybe they could call it a task bar...
There is a way to keep bookmarks organize that is pretty decent, although different from the mismanaged Tab Groups. It is an add-on called Speed Dial. You can organize links into various groups and actually save them as permanently as you wish. The Speed Dial icon can be in your menu bar, and when you click it you see as many tabs as you have groups. To open the links within the tab, you right-click the tab and select open each link in a separate tab, and it works well. It's not quite the Tab Groups, but in some ways it may even be better. It's at least worth a try.