At this point the best thing is to use Firefox forks. I know a lot of people use Librewolf on Desktop, But I personally recommend Zen, it’s miles better than default Firefox in my opinion.
On Android Iceraven is one of the current forks that are still being developed.
But I personally recommend Zen, it’s miles better than default Firefox in my opinion
Zen seems to actually be not great as far as Firefox forks go. In particular, it seems to conflict with Sidebery, and also to take up a lot of resources.
Going to also suggest Floorp 11 (do not know much about whether or not the issues with Floorp 12 have been resolved) as a Firefox fork consideration. Out of its unique features, I only care about the (second) sidebar and the ability to start websites in that sort of split screen configuration.
Zen have a sidebar by default, so you shoudn’t need an extension like Sidebery on Zen unless there’s features in the extension that you prefer. From a very quick look, it looks to have the overall same features as the extension, but I might be wrong.
and also to take up a lot of resources.
That has not been my experience to be honest. For me it looks to use the same system resources as Firefox. The only difference I noticed somewhat related to that is that Zen closes immediately for me, while Firefox takes a while to close in the background, so when I close it by mistake, I can just click the icon and it opens back up almost immediately.
Out of its unique features, I only care about the (second) sidebar and the ability to start websites in that sort of split screen configuration.
Fair enough, I heard good things about Floorp, tho I never used it.
For me personally, I really enjoy the workspaces, the Essentials (workspace agnostic pins) and the overall design of Zen. It’s also the first good vertical tab browser I tested, none of the extensions I tested on Firefox were good for me, and I can’t go back to horizontal tabs.
Zen have a sidebar by default, so you shoudn’t need an extension like Sidebery on Zen unless there’s features in the extension that you prefer.
Zen’s default sidebar is much worse than Sidebery. It doesn’t support hierarchical organisation of tabs, it doesn’t support nearly as much non-css customisation, and, until recently, it also didn’t have tab folders.
For me personally, I really enjoy the workspaces, the Essentials (workspace agnostic pins) and the overall design of Zen.
I would like to note a couple of things on the matter:
Sidebery supports both workspaces (though, in this case they are called ‘panels’) and pins (though, I am not sure about global pins). The overall design of Zen seems to be replicable via css customisation of other forks. Considering things like Zen’s default sidebar seemingly being very thin (unless it simply bugged out in my case for some reason) without css customisation, one might as well just take another fork (preferably not Floor in this case, as Floorp has UI that differs from base Firefox in a significant way) and install an appropriate css theme and Sidebery, I would argue.
(For that matter, Floorp also supports workspaces by default, but Sidebery’s workspaces are much more performant and better implemented. This is particularly noticeable when working with thousands of tabs and trying to switch between workspaces.)
none of the extensions I tested on Firefox were good for me, and I can’t go back to horizontal tabs.
I do recommend you take a look at Sidebery. Echoing your sentiment, I can’t go back to other tab UI, including that of Zen (especially from before the tab folders) voluntarily.
I echo your general sentiment about Zen. Zen’s default sidetab is pretty bad (no hierarchical folders in 2025 is wtf), and it doesn’t play nice with Tree Style Tab to the point where I have to disable it.
I do recommend you take a look at Sidebery. Echoing your sentiment, I can’t go back to other tab UI, including that of Zen (especially from before the tab folders) voluntarily.
What is the difference between Sidebery and Tree Style Tab? Or for that matter, how does Floorp compare with the other forks like Zen and Librewolf?
What is the difference between Sidebery and Tree Style Tab?
I initially went from using TST (which is suggested in the settings of Floorp 11, and there is some supposed support for it there, though, probably not in 11 anymore) to Sidebery because TST was frequently ‘forgetting’ the tree structure upon reloading my browser. The TST issue is probably caused by a large amount of tabs open.
Sidebery also supports workspaces (‘panels’) and tab folders (basically, tabs that - when you view them - show their children in a way similar to how you would view items in a file folder).
Do not remember if TST supports snapshots.
IIRC, Sidebery also has much better in-built customisability (as well as css configurations that are already there, such as for making tab titles multi-line).
Or for that matter, how does Floorp compare with the other forks like Zen and Librewolf?
Floorp is largely a basic fork of Firefox, with the only unique feature that I do not know how to reproduce in other (“standard”) forks being the second sidebar that allows for using websites and some other things in a split-screen configuration. The downside is that that sidebar makes complex Firefox css themes (such as ShyFox) not compatible with Floorp without fiddling.
Also, going to note that I am not familiar with the current state of Floorp 12, but I found it unusable for me when I did try it, so I am using Floorp 11.
If one doesn’t care about this split-screen feature, I’d argue that one would be better served by Librewolf or another fork.
I have tried Zen, but I could not make it work for me. Its sidebar lacks in basic configurability such as width, lacks in features of Sidebery (and Sidebery doesn’t seem to work in Zen as of currently). I have not found any features of Zen that aren’t reproducible in other forks (Glance was mentioned, but that, too, seems to be reproducible via existing Firefox extensions in other forks), so all it seems to have is beautiful UI, but that’s where css themes come in play in other forks.
Is that the tree-like organization? I have a shit ton of tabs in one of my workspaces, so that’s something that would be very useful for me to organize related tabs, tho I should also close a lot of them that I simply have no use for but forgot to close lol.
Considering things like Zen’s default sidebar seemingly being very thin…
I think that by default it now uses full sidebar with compact mode enabled, which makes it hidden, tho I use it without the compact mode. But I don’t know CSS to theme stuff, tho there might be themes online I can download.
There is another feature I use a lot on Zen that I forgot to mention, which is Glance, so I’ll probably remain using Zen because of that, but I’ll test Sidebery on Librewolf later but I’m testing Sidebery on Floorp now, thanks for the recommendation!
At this point the best thing is to use Firefox forks. I know a lot of people use Librewolf on Desktop, But I personally recommend Zen, it’s miles better than default Firefox in my opinion.
On Android Iceraven is one of the current forks that are still being developed.
Zen seems to actually be not great as far as Firefox forks go. In particular, it seems to conflict with Sidebery, and also to take up a lot of resources.
Going to also suggest Floorp 11 (do not know much about whether or not the issues with Floorp 12 have been resolved) as a Firefox fork consideration. Out of its unique features, I only care about the (second) sidebar and the ability to start websites in that sort of split screen configuration.
Zen have a sidebar by default, so you shoudn’t need an extension like Sidebery on Zen unless there’s features in the extension that you prefer. From a very quick look, it looks to have the overall same features as the extension, but I might be wrong.
That has not been my experience to be honest. For me it looks to use the same system resources as Firefox. The only difference I noticed somewhat related to that is that Zen closes immediately for me, while Firefox takes a while to close in the background, so when I close it by mistake, I can just click the icon and it opens back up almost immediately.
Fair enough, I heard good things about Floorp, tho I never used it.
For me personally, I really enjoy the workspaces, the Essentials (workspace agnostic pins) and the overall design of Zen. It’s also the first good vertical tab browser I tested, none of the extensions I tested on Firefox were good for me, and I can’t go back to horizontal tabs.
Zen’s default sidebar is much worse than Sidebery. It doesn’t support hierarchical organisation of tabs, it doesn’t support nearly as much non-css customisation, and, until recently, it also didn’t have tab folders.
I would like to note a couple of things on the matter:
Sidebery supports both workspaces (though, in this case they are called ‘panels’) and pins (though, I am not sure about global pins). The overall design of Zen seems to be replicable via css customisation of other forks. Considering things like Zen’s default sidebar seemingly being very thin (unless it simply bugged out in my case for some reason) without css customisation, one might as well just take another fork (preferably not Floor in this case, as Floorp has UI that differs from base Firefox in a significant way) and install an appropriate css theme and Sidebery, I would argue.
(For that matter, Floorp also supports workspaces by default, but Sidebery’s workspaces are much more performant and better implemented. This is particularly noticeable when working with thousands of tabs and trying to switch between workspaces.)
I do recommend you take a look at Sidebery. Echoing your sentiment, I can’t go back to other tab UI, including that of Zen (especially from before the tab folders) voluntarily.
I echo your general sentiment about Zen. Zen’s default sidetab is pretty bad (no hierarchical folders in 2025 is wtf), and it doesn’t play nice with Tree Style Tab to the point where I have to disable it.
What is the difference between Sidebery and Tree Style Tab? Or for that matter, how does Floorp compare with the other forks like Zen and Librewolf?
I initially went from using TST (which is suggested in the settings of Floorp 11, and there is some supposed support for it there, though, probably not in 11 anymore) to Sidebery because TST was frequently ‘forgetting’ the tree structure upon reloading my browser. The TST issue is probably caused by a large amount of tabs open.
Sidebery also supports workspaces (‘panels’) and tab folders (basically, tabs that - when you view them - show their children in a way similar to how you would view items in a file folder).
Do not remember if TST supports snapshots.
IIRC, Sidebery also has much better in-built customisability (as well as css configurations that are already there, such as for making tab titles multi-line).
Floorp is largely a basic fork of Firefox, with the only unique feature that I do not know how to reproduce in other (“standard”) forks being the second sidebar that allows for using websites and some other things in a split-screen configuration. The downside is that that sidebar makes complex Firefox css themes (such as ShyFox) not compatible with Floorp without fiddling.
Also, going to note that I am not familiar with the current state of Floorp 12, but I found it unusable for me when I did try it, so I am using Floorp 11. If one doesn’t care about this split-screen feature, I’d argue that one would be better served by Librewolf or another fork.
I have tried Zen, but I could not make it work for me. Its sidebar lacks in basic configurability such as width, lacks in features of Sidebery (and Sidebery doesn’t seem to work in Zen as of currently). I have not found any features of Zen that aren’t reproducible in other forks (Glance was mentioned, but that, too, seems to be reproducible via existing Firefox extensions in other forks), so all it seems to have is beautiful UI, but that’s where css themes come in play in other forks.
Is that the tree-like organization? I have a shit ton of tabs in one of my workspaces, so that’s something that would be very useful for me to organize related tabs, tho I should also close a lot of them that I simply have no use for but forgot to close lol.
I think that by default it now uses full sidebar with compact mode enabled, which makes it hidden, tho I use it without the compact mode. But I don’t know CSS to theme stuff, tho there might be themes online I can download.
There is another feature I use a lot on Zen that I forgot to mention, which is Glance, so I’ll probably remain using Zen because of that,
but I’ll test Sidebery on Librewolf laterbut I’m testing Sidebery on Floorp now, thanks for the recommendation!