topic Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly! in Discussions

Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

AshleyT — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 19:36:01 GMT

Hi there! I'm Ashley, Senior Staff Product Manager for Firefox. After months of updates on Project Nova, it's finally in Nightly, ready for you to see for yourself. We're modernizing Firefox from the ground up to ensure it remains a fast, secure, and highly customizable companion for today’s internet.

This is still early days, so you'll notice some rough edges — a few things may look unfinished or inconsistent for now. Keep your Nightly up to date to see the latest.

As a reminder, the Project Nova updates include:

Simpler navigation and a redesigned Settings experience, now live in release
Refreshed tabs, icons, spacing, and browser surfaces
More ways to make it yours, with rich new themes, wallpapers, and personalization options that let Firefox match your style.

We're grateful for all the thoughtful feedback we got on our earlier Connect post, on social media, and through user research. Based on what we heard, we've made some changes:

We'll be experimenting with corner roundness settings for tabs to give you more options — coming soon in Firefox Labs.
We brought back Compact Mode so there’s more space for web content and tabs
We added more neutral standard theme options.

You can learn more in our blog post.

See it first in Nightly

Nightly is where this work takes shape in the open, and we wanted you to be among the first to see where it's headed. Since much of what’s changed so far focuses on the look of the interface, keep an eye out for how these layouts feel during your day-to-day browsing. We're aiming for a clean, intuitive experience —so please look out for anything that feels off, like icons, spacing, alignment, or how things hold up across themes, window sizes, different languages, screen readers, and keyboard navigation. If something catches your eye, we'd love to hear about it.

Download the latest version of Nightly to see what's new.

Something's not right? File a bug.

If you find visual or functional issues with the Nova style changes in Nightly, please follow these steps:

Click this link to file a Bugzilla issue. We're asking everyone to file bugs this way, so we can easily keep track of all issues reported.
In the bug, please add steps to reproduce the issue, and if possible screenshots or screencasts. Please don't add severity and priority to the bugs — our triaging teams will handle that.
You can see all Nova testing bugs filed here.

Have overall feedback? Let us know here in Connect.

Drop a comment here to let us know your thoughts and suggestions. Thanks for being part of this.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

akayanni — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 15:53:34 GMT

YUCK I don't need pill like corners. Whoever thought that looked good or was worth the time spent. I do need a common save dialogue for applications so everything isn't dumped in Downloads. Chromium can manage that.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

breakingspell — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:02:54 GMT

Sorry, meant to reply to the thread, not your post 🙂

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

breakingspell — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:02:18 GMT

The outer window padding/border MUST go! It is only appropriate in Mac OS, and only while a floating window, never while tiled, maximized, or full-screen.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2038022

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

Zig — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:13:27 GMT

Tottaly agree! The slight rounded corners we had before were much nicer.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

RaptorZX4_1 — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:22:04 GMT

i really hate this new look. Plus i hate the "contour" thing that shows the background image all around the browser field.

really hate it!

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

s_hentzschel — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:22:57 GMT

I's obvious that you didn't test Nova with a nightly build if you think the outer border appears in full-screen mode. That was an unfinished state and has long since been fixed.

And for the record, I couldn't disagree more that it should be removed in maximized mode. For me, it makes no sense at all to remove the main characteristic of the design in maximized mode. It should not look different than the non-maximized mode.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

s_hentzschel — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:24:50 GMT

Well, nobody "needs" a specific border-radius. It's a design decision and some prefer less rounding while others prefer more rounding. This is something that it easy to change with userChrome.css.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

Kvin — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:05:33 GMT

Hi, I have some important questions regarding the design and interface

1. Will it be possible to customize the rounding not only for tabs, but also for buttons, the search bar, context menus, etc.? Otherwise, I’ll have to use CSS styles for medium rounding. I don’t like the new, extreme rounding on tabs, buttons, the search bar, etc. For example, the Vivaldi browser lets you choose and customize the rounding. Please, this is very important.

2. Are there plans to implement a blur effect across the entire browser? For example, like in Zen and Arc, it looks great, and I’ve heard from various people that they want Firefox to have a blur effect across the entire interface.

3. Will there be a new browser icon? The Firefox icon hasn’t changed since 2019, and besides, the icons for channels like ESR, Stable, and Beta are all the same.

4. Will the add-ons page get a new interface design? I’d really like to see add-ons displayed in columns or a grid on the page so there’s less scrolling, and I’d also like a new design for the history and bookmarks pages, etc.

5. Will the icons be brought back to the menu and added to the context menus? It’s a shame that the icons still haven’t been restored(

6. Is there a plan to redesign the Extension Store’s layout and interface? It would be great if the first comments were displayed without having to open the comments section, if there were a column showing similar extensions, if video demos for extensions were supported, and if there were no confirmation prompts when installing extensions.

Thank you very much for your answers🙏

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

breakingspell — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:57:05 GMT

You are correct, I have not tested Nova in today's Nightly. I will never drive Nova until that border is dealt with. I'm following the relevant Bugzilla reports like a hawk, full-screen state is "fixed" but not any other window state yet.

Here's some context you should know. Roughly a year ago the ability to interact with top tabs in maximized and tiled windows under KDE Plasma was broken, and I stepped forward to ensure it was fixed. The left-hand behavior is correct, right-hand is where the break was.

The outer Nova border destroys this behavior and goes back to the right-hand example here. Even if the border is interactive, I would remove it in CSS as I value edge-to-edge tiled windows.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

kwiatek — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:44:47 GMT

First of all, thank you for bringing back Compact mode.

Secondly, please stop this madness with rounding everything. Each UI re-disgn just introduces even more rounded corners which occupy too much space.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

RaptorZX4_1 — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:04:58 GMT

if they really want to keep the rounded things, this should stay ONLY ON PHONES. I'm on a computer typing this right now, i hate rounded corners. Plus this border they made around the browser is just plain stupid, i really hope they remove that!

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

GamingX42 — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:05:42 GMT

I really got used to being able to move my mouse to the very top of my monitor to click on a tab, or the very corners to get to the first tab or to close the window - that is not possible anymore and its because of the insanely unnecessary tiny border around the entire window - so stop that and all the other added rounding, it just looks like chrome in a bad way.

Even apple understood with iOS 27 that adding back straight lines where they make sense is good UI design.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

Ronifue — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:17:27 GMT

This "new design" really isn't well thought out, and why can't you just improve upon your original clean, square UI design? I'm not against rounded corners, but if you're going to adopt them as a new design approach, you might as well learn from how Vivaldi does it. Their rounded corner design is elegant and beautiful, with smooth interactive animations that seamlessly integrate with the browser. In contrast, your new design manages to make even a combination of rounded corners look disharmonious. Why are some elements square while others are round? And I'd like to know, why is there a thin dividing line between my browser page and the toolbar? This meaningless separation is a complete waste of my screen's usable space.😢

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

timidbit — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 21:51:18 GMT

Wow, it's so awful, I can't even describe!

Why would I need unclickable space around tabs and functional buttons?!! What genius invented that?!!

I use Firefox on Windows in maximized mode. Now I can't even click on tabs and minimize/maximize/close buttons at the edges of the screen! How convenient!

Why is everyone obsessed with super rounded corners? It's so ugly and inconvenient.

The last design with slightly rounded tabs was the best. I liked it as soon as it was introduced.

How can I return rectangular tabs?

UPDATE: And the gradient on the tabbar is very distracting. And it's hard to find tabs with my eyes. I would prefer a solid color (as in current default theme). And if a user wants a gradient or transparency or whatever, they can use one of the themes in https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/themes/.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

Jon — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:34:38 GMT

Also want to highlight that @AshleyT will be joining this week's community call to chat more about Project Nova - please join! More info here:

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

tclementdev — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:37:29 GMT

Sad to see this is just an uninspired copy of the current design trend of making everything padded and rounded. Apple did the same and unsurprisingly is already walking back from this in their upcoming macOS (killing their padded sidebar and big rounded window corners). As others have mentioned already, this is a UX downgrade, and even when using the compact mode. I wish for this to just be cancelled but if you are going this way then you should add the necessary options for users who think the current UI is just fine and allow them to happily continue using it.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

Neon1 — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:01:03 GMT

I don't like the gradients on the navigation bar, I think it looks a bit too cartoony for a program that is meant to be used in a professional setting. And it doesn't integrate well with GTK themes, I would expect the navigation bar and the gradient around the tab pills to go away when I am using the Linux theme, but it doesn't.

It would be great if we could disable the gradients and if the GTK theme was better integrated when using the option for it.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

lackey — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:08:33 GMT

If you think modifying CSS files is "easy" for the average person, you are out of touch.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

Arenlor — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:10:17 GMT

I can't click on the scrollbar without moving away from the edge. I can't click on the tabs without moving away from the edge. This reduces accessibility. I know you're proud of it, but usability comes before aesthetics. Whoever from the top down approved of this should get fired for making the browser worse and failing to do proper consultation.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

filips123 — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:26:46 GMT

Are there any plans to fix the excessive padding on window borders which causes unclickable elements?

Currently with the redesign, both on the normal and compact mode, because of these "floating" UI elements, things like window controls, tabs and scrollbars are not completely at the edge of the window. Because of this, when the window is maximized, you can't anymore just drag the mouse to the top right corner and click on window controls, to the right and drag the scrollbar, to the top and click on the tabs, to the top left and click on the pinned tabs or sidebar, etc. This is something that I think many users expect to work and also works fine on basically every other app, so I think it should be fixed, both on the compact and also on the normal mode (and the touch mode I guess).

This is also a problem when the window is not necessarily maximized but just tiled to the edge of the screen. For example, on Windows, if I drag the window for example to the right, it automatically tiles/snaps to the screen borders (and another window on the left if it exists). In this case, the borders should also be removed to make clicking on elements near edge possible.

Also, could the floating elements mode be decoupled from the density setting? For example, I would prefer the normal UI density, but without the floating elements. However, regardless of how it looks visually, I think the above problem should be fixed.

Other than that, I think it looks fine. One visual suggestion/complaint that I have is that the bar with the address bar and extension widgets always has a darker fixed-color, while the tabs bar has almost complete transparency. The cut between them looks too harsh, especially on more colorful themes with background images, like Alpenglow (and probably other themes with vivid background images). I'm not sure what the solution would be, but it would probably look better if both the tabs and the address bar had around the same transparency level and color.

For example, here, the cut from the Alpenglow background of the tabs bar to the solid background of the address bar is quite harsh, and the background again leaks below the bar through the gaps between elements. Similarly, even on the Default/Dark theme, there is quite abrupt transition to the address bar.

Although it looks previously looked similarily, I think it's now more noticable because of the gaps between elements. Also, in the old design, the background of the tabs bar was more visible and more saturated, so it matched the address bar color more nicely.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

breakingspell — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:15:44 GMT

I've now tested the latest nightly, we still have no top/edge interactivity when the border is reduced in Compact Mode. This has been relayed to the relevant Bugzilla report.

Wrist strain occurs when required to precisely aim below the screen's top edge, in order to select a tab hundreds of times throughout a day.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

Matth78 — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:33:51 GMT

Why a border between bookmarks toolbar and the above url bar ??? Doesn't look nice, it was better on older theme without this border.

About the tabs bar, it would be nice to disable the gradient. It doesn't look professional, I can already hear my IT department who are usually advocating for chrome 😕

I also think the squared tabs were a lot better and used space more efficiently

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

bjherbison — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:33:49 GMT

Please read up on Fitts's law. I use web pages with buttons on the edges of web pages -- they no longer work because the button doesn't go to the edge. When I go to the edge and try to select text it doesn't work because you added the useless border. I move to the right to grab the scroll bar and nothing happens because the scroll bar doesn't go to the edge any more.

The useless border is making many web pages much harder to use, including anything with a scroll bar.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

breakingspell — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:34:46 GMT

The community (particularly those affected by regressions in the new design), aren't able to provide actionable feedback or discussion during these calls, correct? What's the point of joining?

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

bozo64_ — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 19:23:57 GMT

Please, please just stick with the old UI, or at least keep an easy to find setting to pick between the two options. Thank you.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

Sef — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 20:13:18 GMT

How can I revert to the old UI?

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

killsalot — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 20:29:23 GMT

wow this is so bad I don't even know where to begin. First off what is with these support forums that pretend like you don't need an account to post?

So regarding nova, first off, not being able to opt out is nuclear awful. Secondly, why did the coloscheme of the theme change? shapes of the icons? whatever. But why change the color? And why make it so hard to make it look like it used to? the theme customization in firefox is anything but accessible. And that would explain why the link in the blogpost doesn't actually tell anyone how to cusomize nova, its just a generic support page.

Worst part by far is the VPN first browsing. Literally, not interested, and I do not trust you people to implement a browser based VPN that is actually secure. We live in a world where CORS exists because you people cannot even properly parse .json files, and you expect yourselves to make a VPN core to the browser and expect russians and iranian hackers to not be snooping packs through it? GET REAL.

Seriously if you guys don't want feedback, if you're just gonna be a bull in a china shop, why do this goofy BS feedback forum? Just so you can sell my gmail to a 3rd party vendor? thanks for abusing me, I'll be sure to NEVER donate to mozilla again.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

killsalot — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 20:34:49 GMT

Actually I take it back, worst part by a country mile is the border around the window.... with light theme on there is this huge border that literally was not there before. makes youtube and any dark website look really bad and the extra margin anyways is a very strange formatting choice.

Seriously I have websites built multi-colored that will look wrong in firefox with this theme setup the way you have. Im staring at an old copy of nightly right now on my dev mac and I can promise you this border did not exist until minutes ago when nova was shoved down my throat. Best part, it looks bad on your guy's own site too!!!!

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

RaptorZX4_1 — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 20:35:49 GMT

yes, this is really ugly, i have no idea why Mozilla did that!

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

Jon — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 20:45:30 GMT

@breakingspell the calls are open to the community to join live and participate—ask questions and share feedback. It's an opportunity to bring the product teams and community closer together, and we're really hoping it becomes a regular thing 😃

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

breakingspell — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 20:47:30 GMT

Thanks for clarifying! It may be apt to update the meeting guide to specify that users/contributors are welcome to actively participate in the calls, not just corporate/employees.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

Jon — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 20:53:39 GMT

Good call! Definitely due for some updates.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

Alfakennyone — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 21:12:01 GMT

Turn it off here:

about:config

browser.nova.enabled = false

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

bjherbison — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 21:33:24 GMT

about:config browser.nova.enabled Set it to false.

That works now, but probably won't work in the long term.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

drunkenmunky_ — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 22:14:37 GMT

If you blindly move the mouse in the corner it has to catch the "close" button. As well windowed or minimize if you move the mouse on the upper most line.

Otherwise I like how mozilla tries out new things.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

RiseofSeren — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 22:19:05 GMT

Absolutely awful! Not only does it look ugly it completely breaks functionality of the browser!!!

- Scrolling is broken, you can't move your mouse all the way to the right to drag scrollbar anymore

- Clicking the X to close tabs is much harder since the hit-box is smaller

- Harder to read tab titles

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

RiseofSeren — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 22:22:46 GMT

Also, as other people have already mentioned, this also makes closing the browser infuriating.

If you don't revert this you will have a lot of people leave...

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

FeItan — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 22:41:36 GMT

I don't like the round tabs but the customizable themes are super cool!

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

Rexon1221 — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 22:47:24 GMT

我是中国人,我前天下载了chrome因为它可以和codex联动,对比了下你的UI设计比Chrome好看,没有chrome臃肿,还是用了firefox,可是今天更新了UI设计,我觉得非常难用而且很丑,不要为了设计而设计,以前我的鼠标指针移到右上角可以直接退出,现在不行了为什么要设计成这样,为了不让人们退出浏览器吗,还是说你们内置了AI需要人们来训练? 而且为什么不能给我们一个选项自行选择旧版设计还是新版? ,不要为了设计而设计! 不要为了设计而设计! 不要为了设计而设计! I'm Chinese. Downloaded Chrome the other day purely for its Codex integration—but honestly? Firefox used to feel like a breath of fresh air. Sleek, lightweight, no Chrome bloat. So I stuck with it. Then today’s UI update hit… and wow, what a mess. It’s clunky, it’s an eyesore, and it screams “design for design’s sake!” Remember when hovering the mouse to the top-right corner meant instant exit? Gone. Poof. What’s the logic here—force us to stay trapped in the browser? Or is there some sneaky AI in there that needs our eyeball time to train itself? And why—WHY—can’t we have a toggle between the old and new UI? Stop designing just to redesign! Stop designing just to redesign! STOP DESIGNING JUST TO REDESIGN!

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

hexd0t — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 22:48:13 GMT

The color strip of Containers has become very small, as if part of the favicon instead of the tab. This makes identification unnecessarily harder, especially because the new default themes all also have a gradient with worse contrast.

Also, running a Tiling Window Manager, I suddenly have an additional, non-functional and alien window decoration around Firefox windows.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

Rexon1221 — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 22:57:37 GMT

that will be helpful.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

cephirosx — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 22:58:01 GMT

The gradient color is a bit distracting, there should be an option for the new themes for the users if they want to use the gradient color or non-gradient.

Also on the default theme, the grayness of the toolbar is a bit on the bright side, there should be an option to make it darker or when the device system theme is dark it should also be darker

and I Still don't like the rounded corners, looking forward to the roundness settings

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

hexd0t — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 22:58:10 GMT

Overall, I feel the current nova design misses an important point:

As a user, my focus is on the website, the browser is the tool to get there. The old UI presented the information needed, but got out of the way as much as possible.

With Nova, it feels like the Browser Chrome is trying to pull attention to itself, distracting from - and much more likely to clash with - the webpage being rendered.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

cephirosx — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 23:01:37 GMT

I agree to this, the new design is a bit attention seeking

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

breakingspell — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 23:02:28 GMT

/thread

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

eldmannen — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 23:11:02 GMT

This looks terrible. It looks all foreign and alien to me. It sticks out like a sore thumb. It looks too bold and brazen. want it to look more anonymous and more like an ordinary system app so that I can focus on the web content instead of how fancy and cool the web browser looks.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

cephirosx — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 23:26:05 GMT

I just also want to add it here, I think most users choose their browser for the ease of use and speed

I like the current Firefox UI because it is not distracting and has it's own identity but with the new design it is like screaming "LOOK AT ME"

Hoping the team really listens to the various feedback about the design

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

Bluxar — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:41:14 GMT

That's what I came to comment

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

ashw — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:56:18 GMT

I like the new colour schemes and the thicker icons, and I don't mind the fact that most things are now rounder, but there seems to be a issue with the drop down menus (from the menu bar) and the items in the "hamburger" application menu. The edges of the items at the top and bottom are too close to the curved corners of the menu.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

sgdsfhesrdssad — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 01:42:57 GMT

Awful. Border with unclickable elements is really just stupid, makes using the scrollbar or closing the window needlessly complicated. Aesthetically it's very corny. What is with the obsession with gradients, lighting effects, and corners so rounded everything is an oval? It's all just distracting and obnoxious. I use a web browser to you know browse websites and not to admire whatever random design elements some mozilla dev thinks looks pretty. If I wanted to use a web browser designed for idiots I would use chrome. Please revert and never develop further 👍

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

bmcdev — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 02:43:53 GMT

The edges are awful. And not just like a "oh this is new and I hate it" thing. Like I genuinely don't get why there is now margins at the borders.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

KERR — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 03:51:34 GMT

I was hoping the theming updates would be an improvement but looks like a long way to go. Rant warning!

The devtool accents should match the theme too!

Edge vs Firefox theme comparison. Sorry, but firefox has a long way to go 🙏

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

juuuustaminutes — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 05:02:11 GMT

I dislike the padding. I always flick my mouse to the corners to close or open the first tab. Having to move my mouse down is **bleep**ty.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

MadMac1 — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 05:30:04 GMT

I want the UI to take less space and provide less distractions. Not more.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

s_hentzschel — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 06:01:02 GMT

That's not the point. The point is that no matter what kind of rounding Mozilla decides on, someone will always be unhappy with it. There’s no objective reason to say that less rounding would be better—you either like it or you don’t. And if it’s important to you, it's easy to change.

Mozilla has a large community that's ready to help anyone who just asks. I know this because I run a Firefox platform myself that does this kind of thing for other users every day. There, too, users with absolutely no prior knowledge sign up every day, and in the end, pretty much everyone got what they wanted. It's only a matter of asking and copy & paste.

And to be fair: Most people don't care about such design details at all. But the people who care can change almost everything because Firefox is the most customizable browser on the market. There it pays off that the Firefox front end is based on web technologies that today's people already learn in school at a young age. You can't do the same things in Chromium based browsers.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

MammothJerk — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 06:06:07 GMT

thank you

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

MammothJerk — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 06:12:02 GMT

hit the update and immediately looked for a way to turn of the rounded corners on everything 🤢

who thought this was a good idea

As you aptly put it "rough edges" is an understatement, hopefully the team can can figure it out.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

bnnck — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 08:13:14 GMT

It looks great on light theme mode, but lost most it's nova identity when it's in dark theme mode

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

nos1609 — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 08:18:31 GMT

Using vertical tabs makes videos in fullscreen cropped with blank space from side- tabbar

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

nos1609 — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 08:25:42 GMT

And vertical tabbar is opening with 1FPS or so, like the ui is being software rendered when there are lots of tabs opened even though I use my FF with 500+ tabs on average with no issues on the not nova UI

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

Pfize183 — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 08:36:26 GMT

Fullscreen rendering is offset when Nova is enabled

When browser.nova.enabled is set to true, fullscreen mode is rendered incorrectly on my system.

The browser content is shifted, leaving a black border on the left and bottom edges of the screen. As a result, the webpage does not fully fill the display.

When I set browser.nova.enabled back to false, fullscreen works correctly again and the black borders disappear.

This issue is reproducible every time on my system.

Firefox version: 155.0a1 (2026-07-27 Nightly)
Operating System: Windows 11

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

NinjaTaco911 — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 08:44:01 GMT

Pls let dark theme be dark without the gradient..
And we need to be able to interact with the tabs and buttons without moving our cursor down like many in here are complaining about.
The borders around almost everything are really not needed and removes me from having an good ui experience

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

PRG — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 08:53:09 GMT

Got the new Nightly update, and very quickly noticed there is an inconvenient deadzone area above the tabs where you can't click on them, preventing me from quickly moving the mouse to the top edge of the screen and clicking the tabs like I had been doing before the update. It seems to have been caused by a black outline across the whole browser window.

So because of muscle memory, I fling the mouse to the top edge of my screen and attempt to click on the tab, nothing happens, and now I have to mouse the mouse down to aim at the tab below the dead space. It is not convenient.

Switching to compact mode removes the outline, but there is still a pixel-tall deadzone above the tabs.

Please fix. For both compact and standard. There should be no deadzone between the edge of the screen and the tabs.

Likewise goes for the side-edge where the top left tab would be, and I assume there would be a similar deadzone for column tabs.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

sysKin — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 09:11:35 GMT

But why??

I help older people with their computers in a local community and their biggest fear is that something changes for no apparent reason. If this new theme eventually lands, I *will* get calls from multiple frightened seniors that they clicked something and it broke their computer and can I fix this please. No, they will not accept an explanation that some unknown UX developers were bored and changed things on their computer and I can't change them back.

Your "you've been updated" tab every few weeks is already giving them a scheduled heart attack (a.k.a. "my internet had no buttons but I closed my computer and opened it again and it works now").

I don't think you guys appreciate the magnitude of this problem. I'd appreciate some responsibility from Mozilla on this. Unless you have a REALLY good reason why this change is necessary and final and you will never have to do this again - just don't. At least minimise visual impact, this flip-flopping between rounded and sharp corners is becoming a meme in computing history.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

radxxx — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 09:26:11 GMT

Thank you so much.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

sklbz — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 09:58:27 GMT

I am glad to see that roundness will be customizable by the user, but I would suggest keeping the old roundness as the default, not only for tabs, but for all other component that were modified to be rounder as well. Also I would like the strip for container tabs to cover the entire tab, as I find it more aesthetic and way easier to distinguish btw containers.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

Lex_Xiama — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 10:47:40 GMT

Thanks mate, youre best

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

RaptorZX4_1 — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 11:14:32 GMT

wonderful! thank you!

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

BEEDELLROKEJULI — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 11:38:43 GMT

Why does it not adhere to my GTK 3 CSS, any more? Additionally, why does the colouration of closed and open tabs not differ, any more?

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

zohnannor — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 12:07:57 GMT

gripes:

- the padding which prevents me from clicking the tabs, the close button and the scrollbar
- the rounded corners which look terrible on tabs and the address bar (i don't mind them on buttons). what is that context menu?

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

wutongtaiwan — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 12:25:14 GMT

I have a small suggestion. When I search for bookmarks in the address bar, I hope there could be a delete button next to the bookmarks I find. Sometimes I need to search for a bookmark and delete it; otherwise, I have to open the website first and then delete it, which is really inconvenient. It would be great if this small suggestion could be implemented.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

JulianCore2 — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 12:31:34 GMT

I dont think the whole new "Pill-like" thing is THAT bad.

It would be really good if there was just a simple option where you can choose between rounded, slightly rounded and square instead of forcing a single option upon every user

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

zohnannor — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 12:54:23 GMT

disable

browser.nova.enabled

about:config

or add this:

:root {
    --border-radius-xsmall: 1px !important;
    --border-radius-small: 2px !important;
    --border-radius-medium: 3px !important;
    --border-radius-xlarge: 6px !important;
}

.browserContainer,
#navigator-toolbox {
    border: none !important;
}

userChrome.css

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

Minus — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 13:54:02 GMT

Went to sleep with fire fox woke up to chrome clone one hell of a night-ly. STOP ROUNDING EVERY CORNER it destroys firefoxes unique identity, you did that two or three years ago and changed it back why do it again the type of people that like rounded corners are not using firefox they are light weights and will stick to chrome, you need to stick to your demographic you cant compete in that market, your stupid if you think more people are going to download a chrome clone using chrome and then keep using it. the target audience you want to aim for is professionals and hardware enthusiasts, if you want more users add a task manger type interface for hardware monitoring and/or cookie/add-on control but stick to a windows style format so people are familiar with it and feel comfortable, this will also draw in randoms who like to look at numbers and feel good thinking there part of the PC master race, changes like this should also draw in more mobile users if added to the app we live in an age where people want to see what’s going on in the background and think they can control it. why add a border to the whole window it makes it look like your just porting an APP from mobile to PC like a B* i mean cheep skate. that’s all your getting from me for free, i love fire fox just like everyone dose you don’t need to change just keep getting better at what you do

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

guest271314 — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 14:09:38 GMT

The horror... Why?
/guest271314/

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

guest271314 — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 14:12:53 GMT

That double top address bar thingy, with white font on some pink background is ridiculous. Much slower, too. Probably to handle all of the useless graphics.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

zohnannor — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 15:12:11 GMT

:root {
    --border-radius-xsmall: 1px !important;
    --border-radius-small: 2px !important;
    --border-radius-medium: 3px !important;
    --border-radius-xlarge: 6px !important;
}

.browserContainer {
    border: none !important;
}

#navigator-toolbox {
    border: none !important;
    overflow: visible !important;
}

better version

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

wellington1993 — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 15:16:02 GMT

Hi, I mostly liked the new design, but I confess that level of round in the things scarred me.
In my opinion, some things could be a little rounded.
Could be possible a little transparency or opacity tricks on the painted areas?

My best Regards,
Wellington Torrejais da Silva

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

wellington1993 — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 15:17:59 GMT

Maybe a new radius adjustment on browser preferences ou theme could help.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

bmcdev — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 15:44:08 GMT

Much better. Thank you.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

VerGreeneyes — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 15:59:52 GMT

Still mulling over the aesthetic, but one ergonomic annoyance: Even with a maximized window, it's easy to sweep the cursor to the top of the screen and click above the reactive area of a tab title. That's pretty annoying: I now have to carefully position the cursor inside the reactive area to click between tabs.

I've noticed the same with the scrollbar, but that may be preexisting. I'd like the rightmost edge of the scrollbar to react too, at least with a maximized window.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

mcnew — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 16:16:29 GMT

Why is the active page title in a rounded tab that just floats in mid-air in the tab strip and has such a heavy accent?
Why is the tab grouping in such a weirdly shaped element?
Why is the entire UI built on floating, detached elements that really break up the interface and waste space?
Why does compact mode in Nova take up just as much space as normal mode in the current design?
Why do you need everything to be rounded?
Why does every element have to get bigger? Just look at what you've already done to the navigation bar on Android; compare its height in FF vs Chromium browsers.
Why does the new settings page require more clicks, while everything has gotten even larger in size?

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

jwolf — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 16:57:34 GMT

hi Kvin, great questions. I don't know the answers to all of them but I wanted to answer what I could. Anything I can't I've left blank.

2. We're looking at Mica and supporting more mac translucency. We want to do this thoughtfully once we launch Nova so this is being investigated as something we support.

3. We recently did a redesign and brought a new Firefox Mascot (Kit!) forward. However, we are NOT updating our icon at the time. On mobile you can switch out your app icon and we have some fun options.

4&6. This is great feedback. I've passed it on to the designer in this space.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

wdw1007 — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 17:41:52 GMT

As shown in the image, the width of the top bar changes when the window is snapped to the edge of the desktop.

I personally think an option should be provided to make it uniformly narrow or wide, or to allow it to change accordingly.

The spacing between elements in the menu bar is too small.

And I hope the color change in the top bar is optional, like the previous default theme where only deep black was available.

The changes are good, but hopefully future versions will allow users to choose between the old and new UI versions. 😀

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

nilsmartel — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 17:46:16 GMT

Hope this is the place for feedback of the new design 🙂
Often times the cursor just rests at the edge of the screen.

Now, when doing that, things like scrolling are not working anymore, because firefox interprets that as not scrolling the webpack.

Slight iritation I imagine quit a couple of people are going to encounter

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

Mkn — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 18:00:47 GMT

Hi, are there any plans to bring back the icons in the menu?
And to give the tabs a background?
Also, are there any plans to update the new tab so that visual bookmarks are larger or so that users can adjust their size?
Also, have you considered adding the ability to switch between different interface designs, like Photon, Proton, and Nova? This feature is available in browsers like Floorp and Waterfox, which are based on Firefox.
Thank you for improving Firefox!

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

kornel — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 18:04:55 GMT

The compact mode isn't compact enough (I've been using the previous unsupported one, losing it is a dealbreaker for me).

I feel like the design robbed me of precious screen real estate. I have a bajillion tabs open and every pixel counts. There's an extra border around page content area that divides page from the toolbar. It also wastes precious vertical space and creates a super irritating asymmetric rounded corner with the sidebar.

I'm also disappointed by loss of clear tab coloring for multi-account containers. The line on the top of the tab was very clear visual grouping. A line on top of favicon looks like a rendering glitch in the favicon, and makes the weight of favicons feel off-center, which is extra jarring when everything rounded like it's 2010 again.

on macOS the whole UI is rounded almost but not quite like Liquid Glass, which makes it feel like a uncanny valley knock-off. Previous squareish UI was self-consistent and stood on its own. This one looks like you've tried to copy Apple, but couldn't get it right.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

ShadowTwinkle — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 18:27:33 GMT

Not big fan of the Nova Style changes. The corner lines really bother me

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

untriedutility — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 18:32:31 GMT

Hi, I just enabled the new Nova UI experience for Firefox Nightly. Honestly, as a first start, I really like the new design. It feels sleek. It just feels new and refreshed, so I really like that. I like the ability to be able to change the icon of the Firefox browser. It feels like we have a little bit more customizability now. One thing I would note is that I really like the border radiuses that are applied across, like, not just the normal browser view, but also the settings page and stuff. I do think the radius, the border radius, is a little inconsistent at times. And also not always compatible with, for example, extensions and stuff. So that might be something to think about, or at least be able to tweak ourselves.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

CS2 — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 18:45:28 GMT

it really should be "easier" to do that then, it currently takes a bit out of your way, requires updating if the ui changes, and in general would be a lot nicer if they just added more customization support (or even, readd full theming)

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

Ares283 — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 18:47:05 GMT

This is a straight up downgrade, please revert this update or make the new UI optional...

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

JustForThis — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 18:52:26 GMT

The new “design” is awful. I think it’s really terrible, especially the borders in full screen. That completely destroys the purpose of “full screen” when you can still see these weird borders. Switching to “compact mode” doesn’t make it any better either, because everything becomes even smaller as well. I don’t understand how anyone could think this kind of worse improvement is good. But that’s just my opinion. Please roll back this “design” or at least make it optional. If this “design” stays like that, I’ll switch browsers. Thank you.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

TryBest — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 19:05:08 GMT

Arc "mode" would be the best approach. When it comes to user experience, Arc leaves every other browser in the dust.

One of the biggest issues with any version of Firefox is the lack of modernization regarding the "basics."
On large screens, all the Settings menus are left-aligned. Native centering would be much better.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

yukine8 — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 19:34:19 GMT

CLI and GUI are both user interfaces, yet the concept of backward compatibility is completely thrown out the window when it comes to GUIs. This feels exactly like the Windows 8 disaster. Have you forgotten how regular users couldn't even figure out how to shut down their machines?

Let’s be real, you are not Apple or Google. You can't even get your clickable areas to match the visual UI, and apparently, calculating a proper border-radius is too mathematically complex for you.

If you actually want to deliver an excellent user experience, the shortest path would be to downsize the UI team and take away their ability to make arbitrary design changes.

But I know how this works. You will ignore community feedback as usual, Nova will be implemented anyway, the about:config flag will quietly disappear, and we will be forced to fix your mess via userChrome.css. It's so predictable.

Bring back the square corners, or at least give users the choice.

What an absolute joke.

I created this account solely to voice my frustration over this disaster.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

YourLocalGoober — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 19:59:14 GMT

GUYS THIS IS A EARLY PREVIEW NOT THE FULL THING BEING RELEASED OF COURSE THERE ARE ISSUES.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

YourLocalGoober — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 20:01:21 GMT

And i love it, but plz fix the toolbar and sidebar, they look odd with the new design. Also pls add a option to get the old normal theme back, or at the very least put in as a official firefox theme. The criticism is undeserved and its too early to critisize the whole thing. If we can go back to the old thing i bet 99% of complainers would stop complaining.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

YourLocalGoober — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 20:03:03 GMT

Look i understand you, but its a early preview and nobody seems to understand that. And to add to that this is less than a quarter to release.

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

YourLocalGoober — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 20:04:01 GMT

yeah.... but we are on nightly so its gonna be rough (look all good features werent always good when in nightly)

Re: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

YourLocalGoober — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 20:15:44 GMT

yeah i didnt notice that but good catch