Firefox users criticized the permanent ‘List All Tabs’ button introduced in version 131.0, leading Mozilla to make it removable.
The button, designed to manage hidden tabs and prevent add-ons from hiding them, received backlash for being unnecessary alongside Firefox View.
Mozilla responded with a fix in version 131.0.3, allowing users to remove the button through toolbar customization.
Why do we want to be able to hide tabs in the first place?
Just brainstorming, but you can put a js cryptominer in the background, and then leave it open but hidden. Or load ads, but not actually show them to the user. Probably neither of those use-cases are allowed by addons.mozilla.org TOS, but what they don’t find, they can’t moderate.
tab management addons is one example, like those that make tab groups. maybe there are other use cases too, but this feature is for the addons, not to be directly used by users
Ok, that makes sense.
I still don’t see why they (Mozilla) felt the feature was needed, since if you’re installing an addon to manage tabs, that’s all on you, the user.
Some tab grouping extensions use it to hide tabs that are not in the currently displayed group.