Fenix: [Bug] Recently Closed does not open tabs in PB

[s-ankur]

Steps to reproduce

In private browsing go to History/recently closed
Click on a tab

Expected behavior

Tab opens in PB. This is how other tabs in history behave

Actual behavior

Open in normal mode

Device information

• Android device: Asus Zenfone
• Fenix version: Nightly

[ekager]

The recently closed tabs are being restored (with the state of when they were saved including backstack, private/nonprivate state, etc). Since we are only saving tabs from non-private mode, all of them will be non-privately restored, so this is not necessarily a bug, but perhaps we need UX feedback.

[s-ankur]

Unless it can be made explicitly clear that this is restoration, I think it would be best to just open the url, like history items do

[yoasif]

Tab restore means tab restore - which to me does not mean opening recently closed tabs in a different browsing context.

The bigger issue with closed tabs is that there is no indication that it is anything other than a history entry - tabs contain more than just the last page visited in the tab, but the current UI does not show that in any way.

[ekager]

I think restoring the state of the tab is valuable if we are assuming people use recently closed tabs as a way to access tabs they didn't mean to close.

I see 2 options that could improve understanding as the feature exists:

1. Be more clear about the "restore" - ie something like "Restore Recently Closed Tabs" in the menu/toolbar instead of "Recently Closed Tabs" or having "Restore" button on each of the recently closed tabs (but tapping the whole entry just works)
2. Hide Recently Closed Tabs section while in PBM because they will always be normal tabs and won't be saved/restored in PBM anyway.

cc @topotropic for UX feedback on the issue

[yoasif]

Hide Recently Closed Tabs section while in PBM because they will always be normal tabs and won't be saved/restored in PBM anyway.

@ekager this helps (and should happen), but the bug @s-ankur referenced shows up in history. Should we simply file a bug for this?

I opened https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/15088 for some ideas on how to differentiate closed tabs from pages in the UI as well.

[ekager]

@yoasif I think history entries on tap just open in the current mode, right?

[yoasif]

@yoasif I think history entries on tap just open in the current mode, right?

Yes. @ekager

[topotropic]

Thanks for the feedback! I agree with Emily:

The recently closed tabs are being restored (with the state of when they were saved including backstack, private/nonprivate state, etc). Since we are only saving tabs from non-private mode, all of them will be non-privately restored

I'll close this issue and we can look at the other topics that were brought up separately.