I've been the Firefox sidebar for ages and I find the new one to be a big improvement in terms of usability, but I'm curious about other people's experiences with it. Do you use the sidebar? Which parts of it do you use more (history, synced tabs, bookmarks)? Have you tried the new one and does it work for you? If it doesn't what do you think is missing or could be improved for it to be a full replacement of the old one?
Discussion
Loading...
I use the Sidebar mostly with a PWM extension - Bitwarden.
The BW extension, when accessed via the Toolbar, tends to lose entered data while an entry is being edited; the popdown toast hides itself and loses any changes each time a webpage is re-accessed.
However, in the Sidebar, the BW extension remains "displayed" and "active", and this allows various BW data fields to be edited before saving.
Having the Sidebar is great, but I don't use it for any of the "stock" or "OEM" functions like "History" etc.
Vertical tabs, pinned and tabgroups have revolutionised my workflow in Firefox.
When it will be possible to set own color for, and cut/copy/paste, groups the bliss will be practically complete.
@gabrielesvelto the vertical tabs are such an improvement!
@gabrielesvelto Honestly, Firefox knocked this one out of the park for me, I use it all the time, as well as vertical tabs.
@gabrielesvelto I'm using tree-style tabs in the sidebar, and for me this change just added a big vertical slab of empty wasted space on the left. 😢 (It's even visible in the old&new screenshots on the blog.)
@gerald it can be completely hidden if you don't need it. I keep it hidden and access it via the shortcuts. It can be shown/hidden via a button you can put in the Toolbar or via Ctrl+Alt+z. When you hide it the slab also goes away.
@gabrielesvelto I still want the tree-style tabs at all times! I'd like to hide only this new vertical block with the 2 (for me) icons I don't personally need.
@gerald ah I see, yes that's a valid concern. Does this solution work for you? https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/phasing-out-the-older-version-of-firefox-sidebar-in-2026/m-p/115875/highlight/true#M45241
I don't have Tree Style Tab extension installed, but if it doesn't solve the problem you might want to chime in on Connect or file a bug in the component referenced by the article
@gabrielesvelto yep that worked, thank you! Not intuitive though, so a real option would have been nice. 😄
@gerald leave a comment on that Connect thread then. The feature just landed on nightly so it's the right time to provide feedback so that by the time it reaches release all the quirks have been addressed.
@gabrielesvelto I've never used it.