Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and other web browsers have offered the ability to preview tabs with a mouse hover for years. Mozilla is now testing a similar feature in Firefox, and it could roll out to everyone soon.
Mozilla published a blog post on its Firefox Nightly blog that shows off some recent improvements in the web browser’s cutting-edge branch, and one of them is the ability to see floating previews when hovering the mouse over tabs. They are currently turned off by default, but if you haveFirefox Nightlyinstalled, you can turn it on by navigating toabout:configand settingbrowser.tabs.cardPreview.enabledto true.
Google Chromestarted testing hover tab previews in 2019, but it took a while to roll out to all users. The feature was present in the original version of Microsoft Edge that arrived alongside Windows 10, but when Edge switched to a Chromium base, the feature was missing until it wasadded back in 2021. It’s also available in some other Chromium-based browsers and Apple Safari.
Mozilla Firefox has supported tab previews for years, but not in the tab bar: there’s a setting to show them on Windowswhen hovering over Firefox’s icon in the taskbar. This new implementation is (presumably) coming to all platforms, and since it works more like the tab previews on Chrome and other browsers, it should make switching to Firefox a bit less confusing.
The feature isn’t even enabled by default in the testing versions of Firefox right now, so it might be a while before it rolls out for everyone in a stable Firefox release. Still, it’s great to see Mozilla is working on it, and it should come sometime soon.
Firefox 122was just released near the end of January, with more detailed search suggestions in the address bar, improvements to the local translation feature, support for creating and using iCloud Keychain passkeys on macOS, and a new installation package for Ubuntu and other Debian-based systems. The next release,Firefox 123, isscheduled to arrive on February 20with more translation improvements and several development fixes.
