Can I hide native tabs at the top of Firefox?

Question

I've started using Tree Style Tab on Firefox. It's a great solution for cases where you have many, many tabs and you want to add some level of organization to it.

It's becoming increasingly unnecessary to have the list of tabs on the top of my browser.

Is it possible to hide the list of tabs at the top of the browser?

Answer 1

To hide the native tabs, you'll have to add a new file called userChrome.css and the css property visibility: collapse.

To do this, in Firefox click on Click on Menu -> Help -> More Troubleshooting Information or navigate to about:support in the address bar.

Under the Application Basics section, there will be a section called Profile Folder with a button to Open Directory.

In the Profile Directory create a new folder called chrome. In the chrome folder create or edit the file userChrome.css if it already exists.

The contents of userChrome.css should be the following.

/* hides the native tabs */
#TabsToolbar {
  visibility: collapse;
}

---

Some optional further modifications to put in userChrome.css are:

/* hides the title bar */
#titlebar {
  visibility: collapse;
}

/* hides the sidebar */
#sidebar-header {
  visibility: collapse !important;
} 

A configuration that Xilin Sun uses is:

/* hides the native tabs */
#TabsToolbar {
  visibility: collapse;
}
/* leaves space for the window buttons */
#nav-bar {
    margin-top: -8px;
    margin-right: 74px;
    margin-bottom: -4px;
}

Try these out and see what you think looks best.

---

To answer your question in the comment, you may like this option better. I tried using visibility, but it was extremely flashy and jittery with the hover.

/* Option 1 */
#TabsToolbar {
    opacity: 0.0;
}

#TabsToolbar:hover {
    opacity: 1.0;
}

/* Option 2 */
#TabsToolbar {
    visibility: collapse;
}

#navigator-toolbox:hover #TabsToolbar {
    visibility: visible;
}

---

Before you close and relaunch, you must open about:config and toggle the property toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets to true for this to be enabled.

Answer 2

Re-enable Custom CSS

1. Visit about:config
2. Search toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets
3. Toggle it, making the value true

Create userChrome.css

1. Visit about:support
2. To the right of "Profile Folder", press the button Open Directory
3. Create a new folder named chrome
4. Open the chrome folder and create a new file named userChrome.css

Set the styling in userChrome.css

Different CSS needs to be used depending on whether you have the titlebar enabled.

With Titlebar

Titlebar visible (Hamburger menu at top-right -> More Tools -> Customize Toolbar..)

Result (Ubuntu screenshot)

1. Inside the userChrome.css file, insert the code below to hide tabs:

#TabsToolbar {
  visibility: collapse;
}

2. Close and reopen Firefox to see the changes.

Without Titlebar

Titlebar not visible (Hamburger menu at top-right -> More Tools -> Customize Toolbar..)

Result (Ubuntu screenshot)

1. Inside the userChrome.css file, insert the code below to hide tabs:

#tabbrowser-tabs {
    visibility: collapse;
}

2. Close and reopen Firefox to see the changes.

---

Alternative Styling

Without Titlebar: Mini bar

Result (Ubuntu)

Styling

#tabbrowser-tabs {
    visibility: collapse;
}
#titlebar {
    max-height: 16px;
}
#TabsToolbar .titlebar-buttonbox-container {
    transform: scale(.55) translateY(-10px) translateX(38px);
}

Without Titlebar: Drag Space Only (No Window Buttons)

Result (Ubuntu)

Styling

#tabbrowser-tabs {
    visibility: collapse;
}
#titlebar {
    max-height: 5px;
}
#TabsToolbar .titlebar-buttonbox-container {
    display: none;
}

Without Titlebar: Inline Window Buttons (With Drag Box)

Result (Ubuntu)

Styling

#tabbrowser-tabs {
    visibility: collapse;
}
#navigator-toolbox {
    display: flex;
    flex-flow: row wrap;
}
#titlebar {
    order: 1;
    max-width: 146px;
}
#titlebar #TabsToolbar {
    background-color: var(--toolbar-bgcolor);
    background-image: var(--toolbar-bgimage)
}
#titlebar #TabsToolbar .titlebar-spacer {
    background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.05);
    margin: 3px;
    border-radius: 25%;
    cursor: grab;
}
#titlebar #TabsToolbar .titlebar-spacer[type="pre-tabs"] {
    display: none;
}
#nav-bar {
    order: 0;
    width: calc(100% - 146px);
}
#PersonalToolbar {
    order: 2;
}
/* Update - Hides the new Firefox home + tab dropdown. If you want to keep/customize those buttons. remove the CSS below and adjust the widths above to get everything fitting in one line */
#TabsToolbar .toolbar-items {
  display: none;
}

For MacOS, you can also set

#nav-bar {
    order: 0;
    width: 100%;
}

This will move the window buttons on the bookmarks tab, making the top bar look more complete.

Tweaking these custom styles

You don't have to guess and check the styling. Firefox has a devtools window for the browser itself. It's called "Browser Toolbox", but looks identical to Firefox's website devtools.

Mozilla has info on how to use that here: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/devtools-user/browser_toolbox/index.html

The TL;DR is: Open Devtools -> Go to settings -> Check "Enable browser chrome and add-on debugging" and "Enable remote debugging" -> Use Ctrl + Shift + Alt + i to launch it.

Answer 3

If you're running Windows 10, I've found the following gives the best integration:

1. Enable "Title Bar" mode by going to the hamburger menu (☰) → Customize → Check the "Title Bar" checkbox at the bottom of the screen.
2. Apply the following userChrome.css:

#main-window[tabsintitlebar="true"]:not([extradragspace="true"]) #TabsToolbar {
    opacity: 0;
    pointer-events: none;
}

#main-window:not([tabsintitlebar="true"]) #TabsToolbar {
    visibility: collapse !important;
}

Answer 4

Having gone through most of the solutions in this thread, here is my personal recommendation if you want to achieve following:

• Use Tree Style Tab and want to hide horizontal tabs
• Show a window handler because you need to move a lot
• Across macOS and Windows 10

macOS

Windows 10

---

Step 1: Enable CSS

1. Visit about:config → Click Accept the Risk and Continue
2. Search toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets
3. Toggle it, making the value true

Step 2: Find CSS

1. Visit about:support in the address bar
2. Find table Application Basics → find row Profile Folder → click button Show in Folder or Open Folder. It usually points to
   • /Users/your-alias/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/your-id.Default User for macOS
   • Or C:\Users\your-alias\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\your-id.Default User for Windows
3. In this Profile Folder create a new folder called chrome or open it if it already exsits.
4. In the chrome folder create userChrome.css or edit it if it already exists.

Step 3: Edit CSS

1. Edit userChrome.css and please add:

/* To hide horizontal bars */
#main-window[tabsintitlebar="true"]:not([extradragspace="true"]) #TabsToolbar {
    opacity: 0;
    pointer-events: none;
}

#main-window:not([tabsintitlebar="true"]) #TabsToolbar {
    visibility: collapse !important;
}

2. (Optional) If you want to have a smaller header of Tree Style Tab on the sidebar, please add:

/* For Tree Style Tab */
#sidebar-header{
  font-size: 1em !important;
  padding: 5px 2px 5px 13px !important;
}

Step 4: Enable title Bar and restart

1. Enable "Title Bar" mode

   • Right click on Toolbar → select Customize Toolbar...
   • Or by Click the menu (☰) → More tools → Customize Toolbar...

2. At the left bottom of the screen, check the "Title Bar" checkbox → Submit right bottom button Done

3. Restart.

Answer 5

This css removes tabs, but preserves menu and minimize/maximize/close buttons.

#tabbrowser-tabs {  visibility: collapse;}

Works in FF version 83

Answer 6

Here's my favorite setup for macOS Monterey.

First follow these steps to get userChrome.css enabled.

Then add this to userChrome.css

#tabbrowser-tabs {
  visibility: collapse;
}

#titlebar #TabsToolbar {
  background-color: var(--toolbar-bgcolor);
  background-image: var(--toolbar-bgimage);
  padding-top: 5px;
}

Finally, remove the space between Refresh button and url bar.

• Right click on empty area of toolbar and select Customize.
• Drag spacer from between the refresh button and url bar off the toolbar.
• Done

Answer 7

Ok so this took me a while because for me the window buttons always started to disappear as soon as I "collapsed" the TabsToolBar. After some research I found a solution on a moz support forum that enabled me to hide the native tabs while still maintaining the window min/max/close buttons and having some space to move the window without having a big empty title bar. (As now this will work in Firefox V107.0.1 on Windows10)

To do so here is the CSS to put in your "userChrome.css" after you set the "toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets" option to True in your about:config section.

#main-window[tabsintitlebar="true"]:not([extradragspace="true"]) #TabsToolbar > .toolbar-items {
  opacity: 0;
  pointer-events: none;
}

#main-window:not([tabsintitlebar="true"]) #TabsToolbar {
    visibility: collapse !important;
}

#titlebar {
    max-height: 1px;
}

#nav-bar {
    margin-top: -30px;
    margin-right: 146px;
    margin-bottom: 0px;
}

Now you will also have to add a "flexible space" to your toolbar to have some room to move the window. (Right click anywhere click on customize and drag in into your desired place) This resulted in a Window that was good for me looking like this:

Answer 8

You can just press F11 to go full screen. It takes away the native tabs bar among others.