Disable Tab Previews (Tab Grouping) in Firefox 4 on Windows 7

Window Previews

Windows 7 has a great feature of showing you the contents of all of your active windows for a particular program. For example, if I have multiple Firefox 3.6 windows open, I can see a thumbnail of each one by mousing over the icon in the task tray.

Firefox 4 added a feature called "Tab Preview" which lets you get the same experience, but for each of your tabs in all of your windows. Unfortunately for me, at any given time, I can have anywhere from 10 to 30 tabs open at a time, so this can be a little chaotic for my screen.

In this Hub, we'll go over how to remove Tab Previews and save our sanity.

What's New in Firefox 4

Firefox 4 is Mozilla's latest and greatest version of Firefox. As of January 16, 2011 it is currently in beta (beta 9). Some additions to Firefox 4 over Firefox 3.6:

Tabs on Top - Tabs are now (by default) on Top of the URL bar rather than below it.

Switch to Tab - When typing a URL of a tab already open, Firefox will switch to the current tab instead of starting a new session.

Firefox Button - The menu bar is dead. It has been replaced with a much more convenient Firefox button which includes the same tools.

App Tabs - App Tabs are made smaller (the title is stripped, only the favicon is shown), and stay on the screen no matter what Tab Candy tab group you are in. Simply right click a tab and click Pin.

Step 1: about:config

In Firefox 4, you need to type into the address bar "about:config" (no quotes). Click the button that reads I'll be careful, I promise to proceed.

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Step 2: Filter

We need to find browser.taskbar.previews, so in the Filter box at the top, type or copy exactly the following:

browser.taskbar.previews

Step 3: Disable

Now that you have done that, you should see exactly 3 entries. Disable the one labeled browser.taskbar.previews.enable by double clicking it.

Step 4: Confirm

Your window should look like this…

Make certain that the value is false.

Re-Enable

If ever you'd like to re-enable Tab Previews, simply follow these instructions again. Ensure that the preference for browser.taskbar.previews.enable is true.