Firefox 151 Introduces a Fresh New Look for Home & New Tab (Desktop)

[AmberMeryman]

With Firefox 151, we’re updating the design across Firefox Home and New Tab experiences. This refresh introduces a cleaner, more modern look and feel to surfaces that millions of Firefox users see every day. The updated experience is designed to feel more polished, cohesive, and visually engaging while keeping Firefox fast and easy to use. It is also the foundation for future customization features, coming soon!

Some of the updates you may notice include

• Refined layouts and spacing
• Updated visual styling and treatments
• and New wallpapers - new styles of Kit themed wallpapers, and dark mode versions of previously-light only, as noted here

If you’ve updated to Firefox 151, you’ll begin seeing these changes as they roll out. Users of all versions in all channels will be able to use the new wallpapers immediately.

Let us know what you think below!

- Amber, Firefox Desktop Product

[mark444]

What is a workaround? I have the same problem/issue with this update.

[AmberMeryman]

Thanks for taking the time to share this. We understand that some people want a much cleaner page without the logo taking up space or covering the background and have a fix in place and coming out in the next week or two!

Please hang in there, and you may need to restart Firefox to see the change. 

[lucifer25x]

Shortcuts are too small. I think it would be better if we could customize the size of shortcuts and change between the old and new hover effects (new one scales the shortcut while the old one changes background - which in IMO is much better on eyes)

[AmberMeryman]

Thank you for that feedback! I'll pass it along to my colleague in product and our designer for future enhancements.

[myspace]

still not sure how I'm feeling overall about the changes, might just take time getting used to. but I am enjoying the new kit wallpapers 

[AmberMeryman]

Thank you for sharing the positive feedback about the kit wallpapers!

Let us know in a week or so what you think about the changes. 🙂 

[GastonM]

Please remove the big FireFox logo from browser windows.  I found out how to remove from new tabs but every time I press the Home button, it reappears.  At least, give us an option to turn it off.

[AmberMeryman]

We will be releasing a fix that automatically removes it for users with other New Tab / Firefox Home features off, so they can use wallpapers and a clean surface. That is coming out in the next week or two.

Additionally, by the end of June, we will have an option in the Settings page so that any user can turn off the logo if they wish - this is in response to requests here in Connect!

[Agentvirtuel]

Hello

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/firefox-151-introduces-a-fresh-new-look-for-home-amp-new-...

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/a-huge-empty-field-with-the-firefox-logo-above-the-shortc...

[alex_ff]

Is it some kind of a shift to vibecoding adopted by Mozilla?

First you destroyed Firefox for Android UI, now you made desktop Firefox UI worse.

The icons are too tiny for a big screen and the amount of blank space around them is insane - it's like a small rectangle filled with icons in the middle of huge void.

[AmberMeryman]

Thank you for that feedback! We are looking at changing the number of Shortcuts available, so that may improve your experience?

[Josef-57]

After updating to 151, my home page no longer had 3 columns showing recommended stories but only 2. This was very disappointing. I have a laptop with a small screen and use Windows 10 because It allows me to have my taskbar along the left edge of the screen which I find so much better than at the bottom.

In Firefox 150 I had to zoom down to 90% to allow the 3 columns of recommended stories to show which was perfectly ok. Now I have to zoom down to 67% to get 3 columns, which makes the text much too small. Now with just 2 columns there is a lot of wasted space on either side. I could easily fit another column, but I could find no way to do this other than zooming down to 67%. 

I don't want to have to go back to 150 to try to recapture this ability. This change was a huge shock and completely unanticipated. See attached screenshot.

[AmberMeryman]

Thank you, this is useful feedback and details. We’re hearing that the new layout can reduce how much content fits onscreen, including Stories. We’ll factor this into the spacing and content layout fixes.

[regs]

Light themes are broken with this update. At least in Windows. Context menus are now dark gray - difficult to read. All themes from AMO. Only stock light theme has somewhat light context menu. But stock light theme has broken tab strip. No background on active tab and tab strip itself is dark. So dark itself is difficult to read and now practically impossible to understand which tab is active.

[regs]

Tabstrip screen shot with stock light theme

edit: Turned out when you are not logged you have different insert picture UI, which is not working. But when logged it's different UI and working. Inserted in one post above.

[esdf]

not good 👎

[alex_ff]

This is how the space around the icons now looks like on a Linux system:

 

[Anonymous]

How do i get rid of the useless blank space at the top of the new tab page so i can see all my bookmarks without having to scroll down 

[AmberMeryman]

Thanks for feedback! We hear you on the wasted space and the need to see shortcuts without unnecessary scrolling. This is something we are addressing this in an upcoming update - in the next week or two, so please hang in there a little longer.

Thanks!

- Amber

[mark444]

I find this update very bad. 

All shortcuts are cluttered now. They are smaller, I can't change their size.

Overall its downgrade.

[CoventryUK_kid]

Interesting you mention "refined layouts and spacing. I like simple, so my home page displays 4 shortcut rows, but there is a large blank area above the FF logo which means I have to scroll down to see the 4th row. If I turn on the "weather" function, it appears in the top right corner of my home page. If I turn it off, the "weather" does not display but the spacing above the FF logo remains. Any way I can eliminate the unused space above the FF logo so that I see all 4 rows without having to scroll down?? Thanks. Doug 

[AmberMeryman]

Thanks for feedback!

We hear you and we are fixing this in an upcoming update, for folks with 3+ rows of Shortcuts. That fix is coming in the next week or two, so please hang in there a little longer.

Thanks!

- Amber

[WhyohWhy42]

Not a fan of home page/new tab page changes.  The weather widget grew in size. used to be about 1/2" x 1" now it's  approx. a 1" square with rounded corners.  Also the Firefox icon & name plus all the Icon links have been pushed down towards the bottom of the page. Don't care for the format mods. It was better before.

Oh and just a thought. for the shortcut Icon image why can't we used an image on our pc? Why does the "custom" image have to be an internet URL?

[KitchMactual]

Why are we forced to do anything?  What was wrong with the previous design?  Obviously the huge distaste for the change would cause any sensitive person to immediately return things back as they were.  I mean, seriously, what is wrong with the programmers?

[D00mM4r1n3]

I hate the new shortcuts, too small, too many, and the weather widget is a dull gray box. Simply terrible and never should have been made public. Changing the config to force it to load an older version is not an acceptable workaround.

[heyimlucas]

i love this new update! it looks so sleek and clean. just a question though, how do i add the weather widget to my new tab screen??

[KitchMactual]

That is strange!  I believe we all had it on by default.  That is one of the (many) reasons most of us don't like it.

[Agentvirtuel]

Hello

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-items-on-firefox-new-tab-page

[KitchMactual]

Sadly, that only reinforces the idea that users must now do something they did not have to do before.  Worse, the ability to actually change the layout to get rid of the annoying blank space is still not addressed in the given link, and it remains the worse part of the change.

[Agentvirtuel]

A similar question https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1583364

[CoventryUK_kid]

A few days ago I asked about the blank space above the FF logo and HOW TO MINIMIZE IT. I have 4 shortcut rows on my HOME screen and I have to scroll down to see the 4th row. It looks like whether the WEATHER icon is displayed or not, this space is reserved.

I'd sure like to eliminate the blank space above the FF logo so i can see my 4 shortcut rows all together.

Thank you!

[CoventryUK_kid]

Thanks for your email re the coming update which will resolve this issue!

[PatrickCox]

On the Home page, should I decide to remove the Weather widget, the space above the Firefox logo does not collapse reducing the blank space.  Having this collapse if not making use of a widget would raise the Web search bar and shortcuts making them more accessible.

...Patrick

[KitchMactual]

@AmberMeryman While your desire to help is not in question at all, the fact that you feel the need to respond to so many comments individually only spams our mailboxes.  This is indicative of the Mozilla problem.  Things are not done in a reasonable manner.  It would be far better to make one blanket statement on the issue.  Further, it would have been even better to not have done such a short-sighted change to the program in the first place.  The people need more freedom, not less.  Creating more intuitive interfaces, with the ability to simply drag and drop to make changes to the interface would be better, as well as actually checking with mature users as to their desires, instead of thoughtlessly going willy-nilly and slapping things together that no one wants.  These things should be obvious.

[dftf]

@AmberMeryman : yes, I'm literally being spammed from this site since posting here!

May I suggest you speak to the team who manage this site and suggest the default e-mail notification settings for new accounts should be "send me an e-mail whenever someone replies directly to me", "when an answer is chosen as a solution" or "when a member of Mozilla staff makes a general statement".

I don't need an e-mail for every single new post and replies to those posts, thank you!