Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

They are referring to hiding individual tabs, not hiding the horizontal tab bar.

The legacy extension they are referring to is Tab Groups [0]. It allowed you to separate the tabs of a single session into groups. Selecting the active group would hide the other tabs.

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-groups-pa...



Still, it seems that the current API couldn't really support that use-case if tabs with active audio or video can't be hidden. At least there will be some random tabs hanging around that don't belong to your group.


> if tabs with active audio or video can't be hidden

That's for a good reason. I don't want a tab I can't see to record audio or video. Why would you want to?


But the main use-case for this API seems to be organizing things - and it's strange that I would want certain tabs not take part in my organisation scheme.

If I had virtual desktop support, but certain windows are nevertheless shown on all desktops, that would feel broken, too.

Of course notifying users of audio/video recording is important, but this could be done with a separate notification - with options to stop recording or activate and un-hide the tab.


I don't know if this is the case, but the API ought to also let you kill any active video or audio streams playing in a tab. Then you'd be able to go ahead with hiding them.

If this is not possible or planned, it feels kind of broken in my view.


Looks like it's only for recording streams, not playing them. I misunderstood that. Apologies.


Oh! Ok. I've actually used this extension a bunch, but it was several years ago.

Wasn't it part of Firefox at one point? Or, am I misremembering.





Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: