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I've gone the opposite direction and installed Firefox Focus. I found myself accumulating 100s of tabs that I would supposedly get back to, and it was causing

I've gone the opposite direction and installed Firefox Focus. I found myself accumulating 100s of tabs that I would supposedly get back to, and it was causing anxiety. Firefox focus is ephemeral and your tabs will disappear. It doesn't permanently store cookies. It has a built in ad blocker. It's perfect to keep me "focused" on the task at hand.

user_7832 5y ago
The repeated "accept cookies" pop ups are what make me switch back every time I use FF though. Is there any fix for it?
- brnt 5y ago
  Skip those user hostile sites.
  - brink 5y ago
    It's only 95% of the internet.
donio 5y ago
Firefox on Android has an option to auto-close tabs after a while, I have that set to "close after a day" to keep things tidy.
- lelandfe 5y ago
  For Safari iOS: Settings > Safari > Close Tabs > After One Day/Week/Month
dendrite9 5y ago
I use incognito for most browsing, every so often I lose my tabs. And it is ok. If I care, and remember the site, I'll open it normally and make a bookmark. If not it isn't the end of the world. I keep about 20 tabs open in normal browsing for easy reference. Incognito for most browsing. And Firefox Focus for even more ephemeral stuff, copied links I don't want to touch my other browsing, and screenshots. It sounds a little crazy to write it out, but it works for me.
jillesvangurp 5y ago
Tabs, collections, bookmarks, and top sites UX is really messed up on Firefox Mobile. There's this home screen that is central in the UX that lists top sites and collections and that is the primary way to open things you frequently access. If you have zero tabs or open firefox mobile, that's the screen you see first. However, I stopped using collections because they somehow got it in their heads that the user wants to add a specific, cached version in time of a website. So I add HN to a collection and then access it and I get a 3 month old version of HN because that's when I added it. That probably makes as much sense to me as it does to you. You can reload the page as "fix". Collections are not bookmark folders. They are not synced as part of your bookmarks. They are not accessible on desktop. They are mobile only. They are completely useless as far as I'm concerned. If you make the mistake of using them, get used to stale content or obsessively refresh every tab manually right after you open it. Seriously WTF?! Because they have that broken/half assed collection concept in the UX, bookmarks are not very prominent and accessing them is unnecessarily hard. Bookmarks are actually synced and you can access your desktop bookmarks that way. But you have to dive deep into a menu to access them and adding new bookmarks is basically not supported: you can't "star" them like you would on the desktop version. There is no option to add a bookmark for the website you are looking at that is obvious to me other than actually going to the bookmark manager and creating a bookmark by manually copy/pasting the url from the url bar. As an alternative you can add websites to "top sites", which are not bookmarks (why?!), which is not part of a collection, and which are also not synced. But at least they show you the current version of a web site. Conceptually it's kind of exactly the same as the bookmark toolbar in the desktop version. If you click a top site, it opens a new tab. Always. This is annoying. I still use it because I like having a working ad blocker and at least some basic protection against google tracking everything I do. But the UX is not a selling point right now. I've used a lot of browsers and mobile browsers over the years and this is probably the worst one in terms of bookmarks, which is a basic feature that even Mosaic had back in the day. Simple obvious fix: Deprecate collections and replace them with bookmark folders. Implement starring/bookmarking (how is that not a thing?). Make top sites just another bookmark folder (just like the desktop bookmark toolbar). Make collections sub folders of those. It all syncs. It all works. That also opens the door to supporting firefox containers, which I love and use all the time on desktop. I'd love to have full access to that on mobile.

user_7832 5y ago

The repeated "accept cookies" pop ups are what make me switch back every time I use FF though. Is there any fix for it?

brnt 5y ago
Skip those user hostile sites.
- brink 5y ago
  It's only 95% of the internet.

donio 5y ago

Firefox on Android has an option to auto-close tabs after a while, I have that set to "close after a day" to keep things tidy.

lelandfe 5y ago
For Safari iOS: Settings > Safari > Close Tabs > After One Day/Week/Month

dendrite9 5y ago

I use incognito for most browsing, every so often I lose my tabs. And it is ok. If I care, and remember the site, I'll open it normally and make a bookmark. If not it isn't the end of the world. I keep about 20 tabs open in normal browsing for easy reference. Incognito for most browsing. And Firefox Focus for even more ephemeral stuff, copied links I don't want to touch my other browsing, and screenshots. It sounds a little crazy to write it out, but it works for me.

jillesvangurp 5y ago

Tabs, collections, bookmarks, and top sites UX is really messed up on Firefox Mobile. There's this home screen that is central in the UX that lists top sites and collections and that is the primary way to open things you frequently access. If you have zero tabs or open firefox mobile, that's the screen you see first. However, I stopped using collections because they somehow got it in their heads that the user wants to add a specific, cached version in time of a website. So I add HN to a collection and then access it and I get a 3 month old version of HN because that's when I added it. That probably makes as much sense to me as it does to you. You can reload the page as "fix". Collections are not bookmark folders. They are not synced as part of your bookmarks. They are not accessible on desktop. They are mobile only. They are completely useless as far as I'm concerned. If you make the mistake of using them, get used to stale content or obsessively refresh every tab manually right after you open it. Seriously WTF?! Because they have that broken/half assed collection concept in the UX, bookmarks are not very prominent and accessing them is unnecessarily hard. Bookmarks are actually synced and you can access your desktop bookmarks that way. But you have to dive deep into a menu to access them and adding new bookmarks is basically not supported: you can't "star" them like you would on the desktop version. There is no option to add a bookmark for the website you are looking at that is obvious to me other than actually going to the bookmark manager and creating a bookmark by manually copy/pasting the url from the url bar. As an alternative you can add websites to "top sites", which are not bookmarks (why?!), which is not part of a collection, and which are also not synced. But at least they show you the current version of a web site. Conceptually it's kind of exactly the same as the bookmark toolbar in the desktop version. If you click a top site, it opens a new tab. Always. This is annoying. I still use it because I like having a working ad blocker and at least some basic protection against google tracking everything I do. But the UX is not a selling point right now. I've used a lot of browsers and mobile browsers over the years and this is probably the worst one in terms of bookmarks, which is a basic feature that even Mosaic had back in the day. Simple obvious fix: Deprecate collections and replace them with bookmark folders. Implement starring/bookmarking (how is that not a thing?). Make top sites just another bookmark folder (just like the desktop bookmark toolbar). Make collections sub folders of those. It all syncs. It all works. That also opens the door to supporting firefox containers, which I love and use all the time on desktop. I'd love to have full access to that on mobile.