# Sidebery

27 Hacker News commenters recommended Sidebery and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Firefox extension that shows tabs as a vertical, nested tree with flexible customization and handles thousands of tabs well. Critics say being an extension causes occasional glitches.

## Why people recommend it

- Vertical tree-style tab display (7 comments): "I am still having to use an extension (Sidebery) because Firefox failed to implement vertical tabs half as good" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49893620)) "The king of all tree-style tab browsers and the #1 reason I won't move away from Firefox." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48556219)) "Sidebery can do the 80% of TST that matters, with a better UI and UX and saner defaults." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50206175))
- Handles thousands of tabs (4 comments): "It gives me most of the features important to me, but better updates and importantly performance" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46006880)) "Firefox + Sidebery don't even break a sweat with 20K tabs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46531257)) "easily handles 3000 tabs across a couple of windows" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48422160))
- Better than Firefox native tabs (4 comments): "I am still having to use an extension (Sidebery) because Firefox failed to implement vertical tabs half as good" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49893620)) "Sidebery can do the 80% of TST that matters, with a better UI and UX and saner defaults." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50206175)) "In inferior execution, Sideberry is still miles ahead compared to the "native" option" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46813736))
- Flexible customization and rules (4 comments): "The way sidebery let's you customize it's right click menu seems to be the right way to go about it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47255506)) "deliver the same functionality I found elsewhere, without taking control from me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49535791)) "I use sidebery to set up rules so I can get the best of both" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49044798))

## What people warn about

- Feels bolted on, occasionally glitchy (3 comments): "they suffer from being extensions and not part of the browser proper, which makes for occasional weird interactions and glitches" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50210367)) "found them all too flaky and tacked-on-feeling for my taste" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46531208)) ""bolted on" feeling always bothered me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50201233))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Unhook](https://hackerapproved.com/p/unhook.md): 48 recommend
- [SingleFile](https://hackerapproved.com/p/singlefile.md): 34 recommend
- [Vimium](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vimium.md): 29 recommend
- [Redirector Firefox extension](https://hackerapproved.com/p/redirector-browser-extension.md): 24 recommend
- [Tree Style Tab](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tree-style-tab.md): 23 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Sidebery", https://hackerapproved.com/p/sidebery/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).