Firefox add-on to copy tab URL without opening tab

Question

Let's say I am working while listening to an online music playlist.

When I notice a track I like, I copy-paste the URL for further reference.

How to copy the URL without opening the tab, which is showing a distracting and potentially not-safe-for-work music video?

I am open to alternative solutions, but an add-on that would add a "Copy URL" item to this right-click menu would be perfect:

Answer 1

I use Tab Mix Plus :: Add-ons für Firefox - Mozilla Add-ons, which can do that and much more:

^{Context menu of Tab Mix Plus (click image for larger variant)}

As you can see in the screenshot, I'm on the right-most tab, while I opened the context menu of the left-most tab. Using the highlighted menu entry, I get the URL of the latter copied to the clipboard.

Tab Mix Plus can do a lot more things for you, which I'm not going to explain in detail here (as you didn't ask for, and the list would get quite long). Some you can already see from the screenshot:

• duplicate/protect tabs
• optionally open links supposed to go to separate windows in new tabs instead
• suppress popups
• scroll or stack tabs
• close/re-open tabs, or "close all tabs left/right of this"
• ...

I'm using TMP for years already, and it's always one of the first addons installed on a new machine – could not do without. Dev is very responsive and helpful, development steady. In short: heartly recommended :)

Answer 2

It is a slightly different workflow but very similar results; I would recommend Tab Mix Plus (TMP). Specifically I would recommend you enable the bookmark tab entry on the tab context menu (addons->TMP->option or Tools->TMP Options and check the bookmark tab entry in the Menu->Tab Context Menus page (see below for screenie).

Then just right click any tab you want and click bookmark tab. This will bookmark the clicked on tab (not necessarily the active tab) and bring up the little bookmark menu off of the star for you to adjust the bookmark if you want.

Some people do complain that TMP is bloated; however I have not observed any functional slow down - no actual timing data but I think that it does minimally slow down initial Firefox launch but not enough to bother me or even be 100% sure. TMP does have a LOT of features but nothing that will change your workflow unless you tell it to through the very nice configuration options:

If you are using alpha (Aurora) you'll want the dev version though that is often not quite 100% functional. I pretty much always use Aurora and I have never noticed any crashing from the dev TMP, however often some features do temporarily fail as changes are made to Aurora - like currently Session handling/undo close tab features.

Answer 3

As Tab Mix Plus isn't compatible with Firefox >= 57 I'd suggest you this way to go:

1. install Copy URL To Clipboard.

After installing it you'll find a new "Copy URL To Clipboard" item in tabs context menu (as well as a "Copy Page URL" item in documents context menu) plus a new tool button that opens a popup when clicked (see image below). This extension will give you options to copy to clipboard URLs and titles of your current tab or your current selection of tabs or the ones of all tabs opened on current Firefox window (including pinned ones) with option to exclude the current one. (When I say tabs on current Firefox window I mean only those = if you have more than one Firefox windows opened the tabs opened on the others windows won't be taken into account);

2. open the other(s) tab(s) you want to copy;

3-a. right click on the tab you want to copy (it doesn't need to be the currently active one) and choose "Copy URL to clipboard > Copy Tab URL > URL";

OR

3-b. either use the apposite Copy URL To Clipboard tool button or right click on the active tab and choose "Copy URL to clipboard > Copy Other Tabs URLs > URL" (this might come in handy when you have more than one tab URL to copy);

4. paste it where you need to.

P.S. There's more addons that you could use in similar fashion to achieve the task, wanting to suggest a couple more I'd point at: CopyTabTitleUrl or Copy Selected Tabs to Clipboard.

That said, if you want you could also copy a link URL without need to open it in a new tab by simply right-clicking on it and selecting "Copy Link Address" command from the context menu.