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piroor
treestyletab
JavaScript2015–2024
piroor / treestyletab

treestyletab

Tree Style Tab, Show tabs like a tree.

56Distinct people
66Mentions
2Explicit recommenders
3.8KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Tree Style Tab, Show tabs like a tree.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

Since you're on Firefox, may I suggest using vertical/tree/nested tabs at the side of the Firefox window? "Tree Style Tab" is the extension I use. Here's a quick screenshot…

bloopernova used a recommendation phrase. 2 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year66 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2015-08-22 14:39:10 UTC to 2024-09-14 19:56:07 UTC.

051015202015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20152016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 21 mentions; 2 submissions, 19 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 0 submissions, 8 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 0 submissions, 6 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 0 submissions, 6 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 0 submissions, 8 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 1 submissions, 4 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 0 submissions, 6 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2024

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC21219
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC808
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC606
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC606
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC808
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC514
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC606
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
Tree Style Tab (aka TST) This extension to Firefox provides the ability to work with tabs as "trees". New tabs opened from the current tab are automatically organized as "children" of the current tab. Such "branches" are easily folded (collapsed) by clicking on the arrow shown in the "parent" tab, so you no longer need to suffer from too many visible tabs. If you want, you can restructure the tree via drag and drop. Such a tree of tabs will behave like a visual browsing history for you. For example, if you see a list of search results for a topic, each search result link will open in new child tab. New tabs opened from these "child" tabs will appear as descendants of their originating tabs. You'll easily dig and dig deeply, without losing your browsing trail - if you want to go back to the original search result, you just have to switch to the "root" tab. Moreover, each tree will reflect a group of tabs on a similar topic. Please enjoy as you like! Release builds The signed package of the latest version is available at Mozilla Add-ons (AMO). See also the strict_min_version information in the install manifest to know the minimum supported Firefox version. Old packages are also downloadable on the AMO website. TST sometimes drops outdated versions of Firefox, but you may find old packages that support the dropped versions of Firefox. For even older versions of Firefox, Waterfox, or Palemoon, Classic Add-ons Archive possibly contains legacy packages of TST. Development builds Builds for each commit are available at "Artifacts" of the CI/CD action. Please note that you need to log in to the GitHub to see artifacts. And you'll need to unzip the downloaded file treestyletab-we.xpi.zip manually to extract the XPI package file treestyletab-we.xpi, otherwise you'll see an error about invalid manifest. Details Development builds are not signed, so you need to load them by an atypical method. (Please click this section to see instructions.) There are two methods to try them in your environment: Go to about:debugging and click "Load Temporary Add-on" button, then choose a XPI file. The development build will be loaded and active until you restart Firefox. Note: don't uninstall the remporarily installed dev build even if you finished a test, because uninstallation clears all configs of TST. Instead you just restart Firefox, then temporarily installed build are unloaded and the previously installed version will go back. If you want to try it as a regular addon instead of a temporary addon, you need to use Nightly instead of the stable Firefox or Firefox beta. On Nightly, go to about:config and set xpinstall.signatures.required to false. Then you will be able to install such an unsigned XPI file. Also, you can build a custom development build locally. For example, here are the steps to build an XPI on Ubuntu (native, or WSL on Windows 10): $ sudo apt install git nodejs npm jq zip $ git clone --recursive https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab.git $ cd treestyletab/webextensions $ make Steps to build a specific revision (for example bb467286d58b3da90fd1b2e6ee8a8016e3377b97): $ cd treestyletab/webextensions $ git checkout bb467286d58b3da90fd1b2e6ee8a8016e3377b97 $ git submodule update $ make Then you will see new .xpi files in the current directory. You can install such a development build via about:debugging. Click the Load Temporary Add-on button and choose treestyletab/manifest.json or a built .xpi file. Extensions that extend TST TST provides an API for other extensions. Some extend the behavior of TST's sidebar panel. See also the list of known helper addons. Similar projects There are some similar project by someone not me providing similar features: Vertical tab bar with tree (and more features) Tree Tabs Sidebery ftt Vertical tab bar with grouping Container Tabs Sidebar Sidebar Tabs Tab Sidebar Vertical tab bar without tree or grouping Tab Center Reborn Vertical Tabs Reloaded Vertigo Tabs Sidebar+ Tabs2List Listing tabs with a search field Some extensions provide a pop-up list of tabs with a search field that complements TST: Tab Manager v2 TabSearch Tabby - Window & Tab Manager Tab Master 5000 Power Tabs Tabs2List: provides not only sidebar panel but a toolbar button with a popup panel also. It has an option to show a search field in the panel by default. for Google Chrome and Chromium Sidewise Tree Style Tabs Tabs Outliner Treely: Tree Style Tab Manager Tree Style Tab for Vivaldi Tree Tabs Requests, proposals, or unexpected trouble from bugs All feedback is handled as GitHub issues. Please read FAQ below, before you post any new feature request. Basic project policy TST is basically designed to be used as a permanently-shown tab management UI, an alternative of Firefox's native tab bar. To avoid users' confusion, TST respects Firefox's built-in behavior and features regarding the tab bar as possible as it can: tab context menu, gestures, etc., except features impossible to be implemented with regular WebExtensions API. TST is designed to work with "tree of tabs". TST's tree is designed to work as an extended memory for your brain. To satisfy this concept, TST is designed to guess the relationship between tabs automatically, from the context. Better usability for ungrouped flat tabs in a vertical tab bar is an added benefit. Any feature request unrelated to these points may be rejected, even if many people love it. For example: session management, search field, detailed focus control of tabs, and so on. Instead of adding more features, I hope to make TST compatible with other tab-related extensions. If it is required for better compatibility, I have added public APIs for other extensions, and there are many implementations using this API. If you need any new APIs, please file API proposals in the issue tracker. Here is the basic policy about decision to accept or reject feature requests: If Firefox has the option, TST also should provide similar
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

66 sources
From yesterday's Firefox thread: Firefox has multiple compelling reasons to use it: Sync[1] only what you allow, bookmarks/history/extensions/etc Containers keep sites separated nicely[2] Tree Style Tabs[3] uBlock Origin on Android[4] Open Source since 1998! Not based on Chromium [1] Be wary of sync on a fresh Linux install, it might sync the default bookmarks and merge them with your own. Not a huge deal but definitely an annoyance. [2] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers [3] Tree Style Tabs requires several extra steps to remove the tabs at the top of the window. You have to set toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets to true, then create a "chrome" (lol![5]) directory in your profile and add a userChrome.css file to it. https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab [4] uBlock Origin on mobile web makes a m
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assive difference. You can even use the same rules that modify the style of the page you're viewing, such as setting HN to a dark mode via: news.ycombinator.com##html:style(filter:invert(95%) hue-rotate(200deg); background: white) [5] I'm aware that the Mozilla UI was called Chrome at one point, not sure if it still is.
In In 2024, please switch to Firefox
I was really enjoying tree tabs and panels of the Arc browser [0] but decided to rollback to firefox so I could have something cross platform. Sidebery lets me do nested tab groups, tab panels, plus its got my bookmarks as a panel too. Performance so far is really good, with ~50 tabs anyway. Only trouble is I had to go to relatively great lengths to hide my horizontal tabs: enable userChrome stylesheets, go to about:support to find my Profile folder, create a chrome folder, create a userChrome.css file and paste contents from [1], and restart. So now I have only the side bar of tree tabs, and a hot key to hide/show. Screencap attached [2] (using classic theme for windows from here [3]) [0] https://arc.net/ [1] https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo... [2] https://coltenj.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Screenshot-20..
Read the rest
In Sidebery – A Firefox extension for managing tabs and bookmarks in sidebar
Out of the box Tree Style Tabs is not very good, due to decisions made by Firefox that are beyond the control of Tree Style Tabs's developer. Enabling the desired behavior likely requires quite a few steps beyond just installing the extension. https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo... Originally, Firefox had a dropdown menu that allowed the user to choose whether tabs were on the top, bottom, left, or right. This has been an annoying trend with Firefox for some time. They take the default, expected functionality, marginalize it while saying "Users who prefer the old way can enable it in a setting / extension" and then the setting gets deprecated or the extension stops working. See also: "Classic Theme Restorer". All the while software that might work better as an extension is bundled with Firefox and enabled by defau
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lt. e.g. "Pocket", "Hello".
In Firefox has surpassed Chrome on Speedometer
I don't really think anyone is copying anyone here. This is a popular feature for browsers that has been around for over a decade. Orion[1] is another recent MacOS browser that released before Arc in 2021 and has vertical tabs. Edge had vertical tabs as an experiment back in 2020[2] and is full feature now. Vivaldi has had vertical tabs since 2015[3]. It might not count since it's not built in, but Firefox has had vertical tab extensions since 2007[4]. [1]https://browser.kagi.com/ [2] https://www.howtogeek.com/697986/how-to-enable-and-use-verti... [3]https://www.maketecheasier.com/vertical-tabs-browsers/ [4]https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/graphs/contributors
In Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs
Stuff I'm thankful for, in no particular order. None of these are particularly unique to me, nor are they obscure and hipster, they're just stuff I have found myself really thankful for. powerlevel10k because it makes adding custom sections to my shell prompt really straightforward. https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k terraform because I have a job wrangling it lol asdf because it manages versions of software for me really well and it has thus far been rock solid reliable. https://asdf-vm.com/ Emacs because it's about as configurable and customizable as my most insane requirements. And emacs lisp is very cool. Similarly, vim and vscode are also dear to me. Factorio! because of course Factorio, it's amazing. Similarly Kerbal Space Program. Firefox for standing up against the chrome hegemony nowadays, and for being so exciting back in
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1998 with its initial open source decision. And Tree Style Tabs, because every time I have to use a browser without it, my skin crawls at the lack of organization. https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab And the big ones: grep, sed, awk, cut, sort, uniq, jq for all the times they've turned something incomprehensible into something useful to this tiny mind. EDIT: oh and zsh because zmodload zsh/datetime gives me $EPOCHSECONDS which makes life so much easier to make cool prompt segments like "days and hours since last commit" and "remaining auth session time in minutes and seconds" # display time since last commit in days and hours gdate -d @$(($EPOCHSECONDS-$(git log -1 --format=%ct))) -u +"(%-dd %-Hh ago)"
In Software I’m thankful for (2021)
> Technically, a window manager can do all that, including the hierarchy. I could envision a WM that allows you to group windows together into tabs or sub-windows. I think Microsoft did something like that with tabs, but I don't know how popular it was/is. Haiku definitely does this (and apparently even the original BeOS did), although for all that the window headers even look like tabs I never stumbled upon it until I saw it mentioned in the manual[1]. I also don’t think it does anything special when the windows in such a group spawn new ones, which would probably be half the joy in such a tiling-like interface (probably because its WM doesn’t really have a notion of a window spawning another one, so if the same application has two of its windows in different such groups and then creates a third one, the WM can’t really tell where the th
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ird one should go). Crackpot idea: go all the way to tree-style tabs[2] and move history into the window manager, too. With enough (probably too much) imagination you could even see how Miller columns[3] would emerge. [1] https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/gui.html#stack-ti... [2] https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_columns
In A terminal with UI like visual code
bloopernova·Jan 6, 2022Recommendation phrase
Since you're on Firefox, may I suggest using vertical/tree/nested tabs at the side of the Firefox window? "Tree Style Tab" is the extension I use. Here's a quick screenshot showing its organizational capabilities: https://imgur.com/gallery/wsHSfSt Mine uses a user style CSS so looks a little different to the default install, but I highly recommend it! If you want to see my CSS, I can share it, just let me know! https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab
In Best Pens for 2022: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

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