[Bug]: Inactive tabs auto-closing also when not requested

[massic80]

Steps to reproduce

(forgive me for any wrong reference, I'm using Italian version)
I don't know whether it's reproducible.

Expected behaviour

Actual behaviour

I just noticed the new Inactive Tabs panel in 92.0a1. Below it, a small label saying that inactive tabs are automatically closed after 30 days.
I don't remember about the previous presence of the "automatically close" option, and in case I chose "never close them", so I was somehow surprised by that warn (specially because it was tiny and very small). I checked on the options and they were set on "never close tabs automatically", as I expected. I changed them to some other option and back to "never close them".
When I reopened the Inactive Tabs panel no warning was shown.
Thus, I figure out one of these (in random order):

1. the warning appears just once (unlikely, but this would be quite uncomfortable for me)
2. the warning was wrongly shown, but everything would have worked as expected (that is, they wouldn't have been closed)
3. the warning was shown cause the option didn't correspond to my selection (and this is the most scary possibility)

In any of the cases, I'd add a quick introduction to v92 users, telling them about the possibility to have their tabs automatically closed.
I also hope that default option is "never close them" :)

Device name

Asus Zenfone 4 Max

Android version

Android 8

Firefox release type

Firefox Nightly

Firefox version

92.0a1

Device logs

No response

Additional information

No response

┆Issue is synchronized with this Jira Task

[klint]

Yes, quite frightening message indeed when one has set tabs to never close! :)

[sor]

For me it did not only show the wrong option, it also applied the wrong option. From my 70 tabs 4 were still tabs (I definitely used more than those 4 in the last 30 days) and 10 were in the "to be closed list" and therefore salvageable, the rest is gone and thanks to no history beyond these 10 inactive ones.
It is completely insane behavior to have this behavior, closing tabs as the default behavior of the browser. Especially without the option to bring ALL closed tabs back

[sor]

Btw: If anyone knows an option to get the closed tabs back I would be really happy.

[massic80]

For me it did not only show the wrong option, it also applied the wrong option. From my 70 tabs 4 were still tabs (I definitely used more than those 4 in the last 30 days) and 10 were in the "to be closed list" and therefore salvageable, the rest is gone and thanks to no history beyond these 10 inactive ones.
It is completely insane behavior to have this behavior, closing tabs as the default behavior of the browser. Especially without the option to bring ALL closed tabs back

I completely agree.
Just remember that it's an alpha, and this probably ISN'T the intended behavior, but rather a bug (at least I hope so), so it may also lose data.
I have more than 100 tabs, I probably will never read all of them, but in case I'd find them in the sync history.

[massic80]

Btw: If anyone knows an option to get the closed tabs back I would be really happy.

I don't know, since my tabs haven't been closed (it's unlikely that the tabs have been closed on the first day), but aren't them in the history menu, just like the tabs you manually open?

[sor]

Btw: If anyone knows an option to get the closed tabs back I would be really happy.

I don't know, since my tabs haven't been closed (it's unlikely that the tabs have been closed on the first day), but aren't them in the history menu, just like the tabs you manually open?

For me my nighly updated to 92.0a1 ~2 hours before I used it and the Tabs were gone when I clicked on the tab-switch button for the first time (it already had a sub 20 number in it)
Finding the tabs again from history is hard, some I opened month ago and did never click on them in the meantime, also all minor pagevisits clutter the history. I keep tabs open as a read-later functionality. I do not want to bookmark them or put them in collections, since I want to read them at some point and then discard them.

[rhagni]

For me my nighly updated to 92.0a1 ~2 hours before I used it and the Tabs were gone when I clicked on the tab-switch button for the first time (it already had a sub 20 number in it)
Finding the tabs again from history is hard, some I opened month ago and did never click on them in the meantime, also all minor pagevisits clutter the history. I keep tabs open as a read-later functionality. I do not want to bookmark them or put them in collections, since I want to read them at some point and then discard them.

Same here. My "infinity" tabs are gone now, only left 14 after today's update.

[massic80]

Daaamn!
Mine have been removed now (and I set it to NEVER CLOSE)! I have 20 open tabs now, and no trace of them in the recently closed tabs. WTF?
Do I really need to recover them from another - disconnected - previously synced Firefox?

[sor]

Daaamn!
Mine have been removed now (and I set it to NEVER CLOSE)! I have 20 open tabs now, and no trace of them in the recently closed tabs. WTF?
Do I really need to recover them from another - disconnected - previously synced Firefox?

The idea with the disconnected browser is good 🤞
Can the priority on this bug be raised since this does not seem like an isolated issue.

[massic80]

This is a severe bug... which may invite testers to resign

[klint]

Funny thing, disconnecting the Mozilla account now crashes my Fenix... 🙄

[sor]

Funny thing, disconnecting the Mozilla account now crashes my Fenix... 🙄

Had that as well, I then uninstalled nightly and now use the stable version on my phone. Btw the recovery of tabs did not work on a non-synced browser, there was nothing in the synced tabs menu when I was offline

[massic80]

...f**k. I would have never expected something like that.
I hope the developers know some behind-the-scenes trick
(meanwhile, some other tabs disappeared 😥

[cadeyrn]

Please note that a lot of people get notifications for every new comment. I understand your frustration but it doesn't help to add so much comments that do not provide any new information. On the contrary: It will also make it more difficult for the developers to find relevant information in this issue.

I would have never expected something like that.

You should always expect severe issues if you use a Nightly build even if Mozilla's Nightly builds are very stable for the most time. But they are still alpha versions and something like that can always happen. That's why it's not recommended to use alpha versions (of any software!) in production.

[massic80]

Yes, I know, and I apologize: I reminded the alpha-alert before you ;)
The core of the message was invoking the devs in order to see whether there was a chance to recover the tabs, like the sessionstore in Firefox desktop.
Moreover, when a new option is intended to give user the option to lose data, particular attention should be applied to the commits.
And I wanted to point out that the tabs disappeared even if I REset the options to don't close.

[bb010g]

Would it be possible to place auto-closed tabs into a separate "recently closed" group that has expiries equal to (tab's time of closure + max(tab expiration time, 1 month))?

That way, given a 10 tab limit to the recently closed tab list & a 1 month duration for tab expiration, if a person opens 20 tabs in Firefox, closes Firefox, and opens it over 2 months later, they can easily restore all their tabs, even after opening a few tabs & then closing them that session before performing the restore? To lose the tabs, the tabs would have to not be restored within a month since the browser was opened & the tabs expired.

[yump]

It should not be overlooked that responsibility for the data loss resulting from this bug is shared by all the people who advised users to switch to Nightly to get addon support, instead of one of the fully functional stable forks such as F-droid Fennec.

[madb1lly]

Hi all,

Same happened to me, I updated and when I next opened Fenix Nightly my tabs stack had been reduced to 18 from 70-something. There were several in the "inactive" section which I tried to restore but instead of being added to the active tabs stack they just disappeared. I can't find any trace of the any of the lost tabs anywhere, not even in the synced tabs lists in other Firefox instances because this Nightly instance already updated them.

I expect that all these tabs are lost now which is frustrating but at least it's a good reminder to stop using Nightly and start using Beta or Release. Also not to use tab collections because they're not synced at all, but that's another topic.

Cheers 🙂

[klint]

Which brings us once more to the same everlasting question : what about syncing collections??? What about removing collections until they are synced? And what about mass copy from various tab lists available in Fenix to synced collections? 😊

[jonalmeida]

The default was reverted; closing this bug.

[massic80]

OK for the default, but does the option work now? I already set it to "don't close" more than twice, and it keeps closing...

[vehosah]

I already have the option on, but it still closes them?

[vehosah]

The default was reverted; closing this bug.

Yeah but it didn't fix the damn problem