Features I Want to See in Firefox

Several weeks ago I switched off Brave to Firefox on both PC and mobile, as I believed it was a more conscientious choice. There are some thought strings here and there about better online privacy, distancing myself from AI slop features and crypto shit, and flipping the bird to Chrome, but with Mozilla being funded directly by Google it sometimes feels like I’m just picking the lesser of two evils. * Or delaying the inevitable enshitification.

Switching to Firefox, there are some nice new features and little ways it does things differently from Brave that I like, but there are some features I miss, like tab groups on mobile. Mozilla has a page for submitting ideas and you can give kudos to the ones you like. I wanted to share the proposals I like, so if you like them too, you should let your voice be known!

Mobile Tab Groups#

The biggest feature I miss from Brave mobile as I had just foreshadowed, is the ability to group tabs together into groups on Firefox mobile. Tab groups is a relatively recent feature on Firefox desktop, so it’s only natural that mobile gets the same treatment soon!

It’s a powerful organizational tool, and it makes it easier to focus on only a small section of tabs at a time. I used mine to keep web comics I was reading in one tab group, and I silo’d multi-tab research into their own tab groups. Occasionally I would have a tab group just for reading articles for later.

JPEG XL Support#

I’ve talked about how awesome JPEG XL is before, as well as my scathing critique of Mozilla for snubbing the feature. It is currently the top 6th most voted idea, top 3rd if you exclude delivered ideas, so I’m curious how long are they going to ignore this popular idea. Please be sure to vote on it as it has big ramifications on the future of the open web!

Customizable Hotkeys#

I am both surprised and a little flabbergasted this is not already a feature of Firefox? Come on Mozilla…

Sync All Settings#

Firefox has a built-in sync feature, but some settings are not synced, primarily toolbar customizations. There is allegedly an about:config setting you can change to enable synching for that, but I’ve not been able to test it. Either way, it should be a default.

Workspaces#

This is an interesting organizational feature that I’ve not been able to try for myself. The idea is that you can have workspaces with their own tabs and tab groups that you can contextually switch between. You might have one for your personal life, another for work, maybe another for research into some topic.

The Firefox fork Floorp has workspaces, but they work in a hacky way with Firefox sync, and in my short time testing it has lead to my tabs getting deleted :/

Progressive Web Apps#

I have not used PWAs much before, but I’ve been rethinking how I engage with websites, especially ones that I frequently open or always keep open, and it seems like PWAs could be a good idea for that. Someone has made an extension that enables PWAs on Firefox desktop, so I’ll be checking how that works for me :o

Integrate uBlock Origin#

I have no idea how feasible this is, so I was pretty amused seeing this be an actual idea request. Either way, it would be an admittedly very cool idea! Other browsers like Brave have ad blockers built-in, so why shouldn’t Firefox too?