Mozilla has announced Firefox’s Smart Window beta with three major features – Automatic tab grouping, duplicate detection, and a new partnership with Exa that lets the AI assistant retrieve current web information and display sources without redirecting users to a separate search results page.
Smart Window, a separate optional window in Firefox, has been available in beta for U.S. And Canadian users since earlier this year. Today’s updates directly address one of modern browsing’s most persistent problems: the accumulation of dozens of related tabs that users lose track of and struggle to organize.
Automatic Tab Grouping and Duplicate Detection
Smart Window now suggests groups for related tabs and automatically assigns names to those groups, helping users organize research sessions or multi-step planning tasks without manual intervention. The feature also identifies duplicate tabs and allows users to close them with a single click, eliminating a common source of tab sprawl.
A third immediate feature is visual browsing history search. Users can enter natural-language queries such as “running shows I looked at last week,” and Smart Window displays visual previews of matching pages from browsing history, making it faster to locate a specific page without opening each result individually.
The Exa Partnership and Real-Time Web Search
The most significant expansion is Mozilla’s new partnership with Exa, an AI-focused search and web retrieval company. Smart Window can now access current web information and cite its sources directly within the window, eliminating the need to open a separate search results page to verify where information came from.
This approach positions Firefox differently from competitors that either rely on traditional search engine results pages or embed search directly into proprietary AI models. The Exa partnership gives Mozilla a way to surface live web data while maintaining transparent sourcing, a feature likely to resonate with users who need to verify information without abandoning their browsing context. It also contrasts with approaches like Firefox’s existing AI tab grouping feature, which focuses on local organization rather than web retrieval.
Upcoming Features and User Control
Mozilla outlined several capabilities still in development. Smart Window will soon surface recent browsing journeys and automatically pull together related tabs and history entries, giving users a starting point when they return to incomplete work. The team is also building a form-filling feature that uses relevant information from browsing history to pre-populate online forms, reducing repetitive data entry across websites.
Users will retain control over what Smart Window can access, including which tabs and data they choose to share with the assistant. This follows Mozilla’s February 2026 announcement of granular AI controls in Firefox 148, which gave users toggles to manage how AI features interact with their browsing data.
Current Availability
Smart Window remains in beta and is currently available in English for Firefox users in the U.S. And Canada. Mozilla has not announced expansion to additional regions or languages, nor a timeline for a full release.
These updates extend Smart Window well beyond simple tab management into a productivity tool that addresses real workflow problems. It will be interesting to see if Mozilla’s approach to transparent sourcing and user control proves more compelling than Chrome’s embedded AI features depends largely on how quickly the company rolls out the announced form-filling and browsing journey recall capabilities.
