How to Add a Vertical Tab Sidebar to Firefox

In 2021, Microsoft added the vertical tab feature to Edge. Enabling Edge’s vertical tabs option will activate a sidebar that includes open page tabs. Users can then switch between pages by clicking on their tabs in that sidebar.

Alas, Firefox has no such built-in vertical tab feature. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t have a tabbed sidebar in Mozilla’s flagship browser. You can add vertical tabs to Mozilla Firefox using the Tab Center Reborn and Sidebery add-ons.

How to Create Vertical Tabs in Firefox with Tab Center Reborn

Tab Center Reborn is a freely available tab sidebar add-on for Firefox that is rated 4.8 (out of five) by users. Its vertical sidebar integrates all the standard page options from Firefox’s standard horizontal tab bar. That extension’s sidebar can also adapt to your browser’s theme when selected to do so.

To get Tab Center Reborn for Firefox:

1. Click Add to Firefox on the download page linked at the bottom of this section.
2. Choose Add option to confirm.
3. Click Show/hide Tab Center Reborn on the Firefox URL toolbar to open the vertical sidebar shown below.

You will immediately notice that the sidebar has thumbnail previews for open page tabs. Admittedly those thumbnail previews are a bit small and not entirely clear. However, it’s still an intuitive feature that Firefox’s horizontal tab bar doesn’t have.

The other thing you’ll probably notice is the search box at the top of the vertical sidebar. You can search for open page tabs by entering keywords for them in the Filter tab box. Firefox’s horizontal tab bar also has a tab search feature, but this feature is only available when you have multiple pages open.

The Center Reborn tab has several keyboard shortcuts. Click Change + F1 hotkeys to open and close the vertical sidebar. Press Change + F2 hotkey will open your last active page tab.

To check Tab Center Reborn options, click Open settings at the top right of the vertical sidebar. There aren’t many customization options available, but you can make some changes to the look and behavior of the sidebar. For example, you can choose Enabled for Compact mode setting to remove thumbnail previews.

You can customize the vertical sidebar even more by typing CSS scripts in the CSS textbox. Choose Custom style sheet check box to import a script there. Press Save CSS will apply the edit of the imported script to the sidebar.

If you’re not particularly savvy with CSS, check out the Tab Center Reborn editing page. That site includes a bunch of CSS scripts that you can copy and paste into the CSS box to apply them. Select the code for a script there, press Control + OLD hotkey and paste it in the CSS box with Control + DRAW movie off.

Download: Tab Center Reborn for Firefox (Free)

How to get vertical tabs in Firefox with Sidebery

Sidebery is a vertical tab sidebar add-on that displays page tabs in a tree structure. That means subpages from the same site branch off from their home pages in that sidebar. This extension also incorporates a bookmarks sidebar panel.

You can add Sidebery to Firefox by clicking Add to Firefox Selection. Then you will see a Sidebery Sidebar Toggle on the Firefox URL toolbar. Click that button to see the vertical tab sidebar.

Sidebery displays your open page tabs in the default panel. When you open linked pages from the same site in new tabs, you’ll notice how they branch off from the original pages in the sidebar. You can click a small arrow to the left of the main root tab to fold or expand its site’s subtrees.

Firefox’s native horizontal tab sidebar does not support tab groups at the time of writing. However, you can group page tabs in the Sidebery sidebar. To do so, right-click a page in the sidebar and select Coporation, group Selection. Then drag and drop the other pages in the sidebar into the same group. Click on a grouped tab to select and open pages from there.

To access your favorite websites, click Bookmarks table at the top of the sidebar. There, you can click on your bookmark folders to view and open saved pages from them. You can also manage your bookmarks from there by right clicking on the saved pages to select Delete, Editorand Create folder option.

Sidebery includes many customization options for you to tweak. Click Open settings at the top right of the vertical tab bar to view Sidebery / Settings navigation. There you can configure interface, general, mouse, keyboard bindings, panel, bookmarks, containers, and tab tree settings — and much more.

Click Appear to the left of the Settings tab to see the visual options of the sidebar. There you can expand or shrink the text size of the sidebar by changing Font size Selection. Selection dark for Color board option to turn sidebar black.

To fully configure the sidebar color scheme, tap Style editing right below those interface options. You can then customize the colors by enabling general color settings. Click the round palette buttons to choose different colors from there. You can restore all default settings by clicking Reset at the bottom of the Style Editor.

The Styles Editor also allows you to customize Sidebery’s tabs. Scroll down Tabs shown below. There you can enable tab height, indent, font, border, shadow and color options to customize Sidebery further.

Sidebery has many hotkeys that you can customize. Click Keystrokes to the left of Setting to see the extension’s shortcuts. You can configure existing hotkeys or add new hotkeys by clicking on the keybinding options there. Then press custom key combinations for them.

If that’s not enough, you can also customize Sidebery’s context menus using its menu editor. Click Menu Editor above Bribery the navigation bar to the left of the tab. From there, you can rearrange or disable the options on the extension’s tabs, panel, and bookmarks context menus by clicking the arrow and the X button.

Download: Sidebery for Firefox (Free)

The benefits of adding vertical tabs to Firefox are plentiful. The vertical sidebar offers more tab space and can fit most page labels when expanded. Sidebery and Tab Center Reborn also offer new tab management features at the top. So you can switch your browser in Firefox with one of those add-ons.

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