Firefox is getting tab previews, here is how to enable them

You can now enable tab previews in Firefox, so when you hover over a tab, its preview thumbnail will appear as a tip card. The feature is already available in the Firefox browser's nightly builds.

The team behind the Firefox browser have introduced a new tab preview feature for users to conveniently navigate through various open websites. This feature will be part of the upcoming Firefox 124 release.

When hovering over a tab, a preview will automatically appear, providing a glimpse of the page's contents in a small window. The window will also display the site's name and link at the top. Other popular apps like Chrome and Edge offer such a feature for a while, so Firefox now follows the suit.

By default, the feature will be disabled, but users can easily enable it. Just make sure you are running Firefox 124, its Nightly build (or stable one, if you are reading us from the future).

Enable Tab Previews in Firefox

To enable preview thumbnails for tabs in the Firefox browser, do the following.

1. Open a new tab, and type about:config in the address bar. Hit Enter.
2. Confirm that you will be careful by clicking the "Accept the risk and continue" blue button.
3. In the search box on the about:config page, type browser.tabs.cardPreview.enabled.
4. Set the browser.tabs.cardPreview.enabled value to true.
5. Restart the Firefox browser.

You are done. From now on, when you hover a tab, you will see its preview thumbnail with the title and URL in a small flyout.

Additionally, users will have control over the delay between hovering the cursor and the preview window's appearance. Here's how.

Adjust the delay before the tab thumbnail appears

1. Open a new tab in Firefox, and type about:config in the URL box.
2. On the about:config page, search for the browser.tabs.cardPreview.delayMs value.
3. Change its value data to the desired number of milliseconds, that is, 2000 for a 2 second delay. The default value is 1000, i.e. 1 second.
4. Restart the browser.

That's it.

The release schedule for Firefox points that the launch of Firefox 124 will happen on March 19, 2024, followed by Firefox 123 on February 20 of the same year.