Firefox’s New “mini Windows” Feature Revolutionizes Productivity.
For many of us, browsing the web involves opening dozens of tabs at once, and important pages can easily get lost in the chaos. Now, Firefox has introduced a feature that I think could help us multitask: “mini window.” As Jack Wallen of ZDNET noted , this new Firefox feature works like a picture-in-picture overlay for video—only here, the PiP displays a website.
“[A mini window] lets you move a tab or a selected section of a page into a compact window that stays on top of other windows while you browse,” Mozilla’s official description reads. “This is useful when you’re multitasking and need to see multiple sources of information at once: help documents, a chat, a video call, a form you’re filling out.” So, a mini window doesn’t necessarily replace having multiple tabs open at once; rather, you can prioritize one tab in a full-size window while keeping another page in view at all times.
This feature is in early development and is currently only available in the “nightly” version of Firefox , the browser’s earliest beta version. Mozilla says it will add this feature to the full version of the browser later this month.
How to Try a Mini Window in Firefox Right Now
If you want to try this out as soon as possible, first install Firefox Nightly on your Mac or PC. Once installed and running, you can open a mini window by right-clicking on a tab’s title and selecting “Move Tab” > “Move to Mini Window.” The tab will shrink and drop to the bottom-right corner by default, remaining on top of all other windows (not just Firefox). You can then scroll and click links as usual in the mini window—any links set to open in a new tab (manually or automatically) will open in the main Firefox window, not in the overlay.
By dragging the window title bar, you can position the mini-window anywhere on the screen, and you can also resize it by dragging the edges—so it doesn’t have to be so tiny. Firefox hides all buttons by default, including the forward, back, and refresh buttons, as well as the address bar and the buttons for closing the window or returning it to a regular tab, although they do appear when you hover over the mini-window.
I find this feature most useful when writing articles where I need to reference something already existing online (which is almost always the case), but it can be used in a variety of other ways. It’s especially handy on a small laptop, where there’s not always enough screen space to open two tabs side by side, or when working with low-priority windows (for example, checking a social media page while reading an important document). Firefox will undoubtedly continue to refine and improve this feature as it rolls out to the stable version of the browser, and it seems likely that other browsers (like Google Chrome) will also implement it in the near future. Ultimately, using mini windows could become as common as opening a long row of tabs.