Tab navigation is completely broken - how do I fix it?
Not a good Firefox day for me. First of all Firefox went dead - it didn't hang, but wherever I clicked, it didn't do anything. Restarting it didn't that, so I updated it in the hope that would fix the problem. However, it didn't, so as advised on this site, I restarted my computer.
Firefox stopped going dead then, but all the tab navigation has broken. There are no close buttons on tabs, the Undo Close Tab and Recently Closed Tabs options in the right click menu have disappeared and even clicking on a tab to go to it doesn't work.
Had a look in the Support section and somebody mentioned installing Tab Control to get close buttons back on tabs, so I did, but even though I installed the add-on, set it to have close buttons on every tab and restarted Firefox, it hasn't done anything. How do I get my tabs to work?
All Replies (5)
Try Firefox Safe Mode to see if the problem goes away. Firefox Safe Mode is a troubleshooting mode that turns off some settings, disables most add-ons (extensions and themes).
If Firefox is open, you can restart in Firefox Safe Mode from the Help menu:
- In Firefox 29.0 and above, click the menu button
, click Help 
and select Restart with Add-ons Disabled.
- In previous Firefox versions, click on the Firefox button at the top left of the Firefox window and click on Help (or click on Help in the Menu bar, if you don't have a Firefox button) then click on Restart with Add-ons Disabled.
If Firefox is not running, you can start Firefox in Safe Mode as follows:
- On Windows: Hold the Shift key when you open the Firefox desktop or Start menu shortcut.
- On Mac: Hold the option key while starting Firefox.
- On Linux: Quit Firefox, go to your Terminal and run firefox -safe-mode
(you may need to specify the Firefox installation path e.g. /usr/lib/firefox)
When the Firefox Safe Mode window appears, select "Start in Safe Mode".
If the issue is not present in Firefox Safe Mode, your problem is probably caused by an extension, and you need to figure out which one. Please follow the Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems article to find the cause.
To exit Firefox Safe Mode, just close Firefox and wait a few seconds before opening Firefox for normal use again.
When you figure out what's causing your issues, please let us know. It might help others with the same problem.
Something in the profile got broken, most likely. You could try removing localstore.rdf and see if that fixes it.
If not, a new profile is probably the best bet.
- If you have many extensions then first enable half of the extensions to test which half has the problem.
- Continue to divide the bad half that still has the issue until you find which one is causing it.
Looked into the solution that didn't involve endless tinkering in Safe Mode, but it said my toolbar customisations will be gone if I do that. Does that mean I'd need to reinstall all my add-ons?
Your extensions are only disabled when you start Firefox in Safe Mode and not removed. You should keep your toolbar customization as current versions store this in a pref. Buttons added by disabled extensions won't show of course.
You can start with disabling all tab related extensions to start with and if that isn't enough then extend it and disable more extensions.