The new Firefox design lands in today. This is what you can expect

[AshleyT]

Firefox has evolved significantly over the past year and now, its look has evolved too. 

The design begins rolling out today, with Firefox 157, bringing a cleaner, more cohesive , and more adaptable experience. It is still the Firefox you know and trust, with the same commitment to independence, privacy, customization, and user control. 

The Mozilla Connect community has helped shape this work from the beginning by sharing feedback on the early designs, tested the experience in Nightly starting in July, filed bugs, and shared with us what worked and what didn’t.

Here’s what landed today.

A cleaner, more cohesive design

• Softer tab shapes
• Redrawn icons that hold up better across light and dark themes
• Rebalanced spacing throughout the interface
• A refreshed color palette featuring the glow of the active tab, deeper purples, and warmer light tones

The updated design brought bolder color choices to Firefox — and your feedback made clear that opinions on browser color run the full spectrum. In response, we created additional themes, accessible through add-ons and a new theme picker off Firefox Home, so you have greater control over how Firefox looks. 

More ways to make Firefox yours

Firefox is becoming more customizable, giving you more ways to shape the browser around how you browse. These options include:

• A new theme picker in the customization panel on the Firefox Home page. Additional community themes remain available through about:addons.
• New Firefox themes and wallpapers
• A dedicated space to pin and organize shortcuts so sites you use all the time stay put.
• Compact Mode for a denser browsing experience

Compact mode now officially supported!

Compact Mode is now available as its own dedicated setting. It will also switch on automatically on smaller screens, reducing the space between interface elements so more fits on the screen.

This is one of the clearest examples of how community feedback shaped Nova. Many of you told us that maintaining a denser interface was important, and we listened.

Faster performance

The refreshed experience also includes improvements to Firefox’s startup, page-loading, and scrolling speeds.

Frequently asked questions

Will my existing themes and add-ons continue to work?

Themes and add-ons should continue to work. Nova is built on the same Firefox foundation, and the extension and theming architecture has not changed.

Will my userChrome.css customizations continue to work?

Some customizations may require minor adjustments, depending on how closely they rely on element names or layout structures from the previous interface. 

But keep in mind that Mozilla does not officially support customizations made through userChrome.css. They can cause unexpected behavior or even break Firefox, and future updates may affect them as Firefox continues to evolve. If you choose to use userChrome.css, please proceed carefully.

You can learn more in Firefox advanced customization and configuration options.

Can I opt out of the update?

The new Firefox design becomes the default experience starting with Firefox 157. However, you have several ways to adjust how Firefox looks and feels, including Compact Mode, themes, wallpapers, and New Tab customization. 

Keep shaping Firefox with us

Nova may be shipping today, but the work doesn’t stop here. Many of these updates grew directly from the bugs you filed and the conversations you started while the design was being developed.

Update to Firefox 157 to try the refreshed experience, then let us know what works well and what could still be improved. Your feedback will continue to help shape what comes next.

[e325325321]

Did you hire a junior high school graduate as a designer? How could they design such a cheap and ugly user interface?

[robotmay]

This new design is abominable. I've had to make an account here just to comment because this is so bad I might have to leave Firefox after over 25 years if you remove the old design as an option. Nobody wants this. This is Digg levels of design bull**bleep**tery.

The browser should not be visually distracting. It is a tool to browse the internet. Apple was wrong to go to this stupid rounded pill shape for buttons, as is everyone who copies them. You have mouseover states that highlight a circle when the cursor isn't in the circle because the underlying area is actually a square. It's ridiculous.

I'm turning off automatic updates and I don't care if that opens me to security issues - I'd rather get hacked than deal with the visual change.

Edit: Actually, you know what, **bleep** this. I'm swapping to Waterfox, which maintains the option to pick from the previous themes. I've been using Firefox since I was about 10, I didn't think this would be the thing that broke me, but here we are.

[Agentvirtuel]

Bonjour

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1590804

As for me, i choose my favorable moment to perform the updates
I use, DisableAppUpdate (e.g) https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1608387#answer-1851311
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSdjN13SIps

As for me, i use dedicated profiles per Firefox installation, by way of illustration.
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/using-older-versions/m-p/52750/highlight/true#M18762

Firefox(s) est à jour.

[metadidact]

You are not going to get ANYTHING from cargo-culting Chrome's UI. Please stop and actually think instead of going down the route of clueless execs and following the easily visible shiny UI overhaul path.

[atlisd]

Long time and loyal Firefox user... I hate this new design and instantly disabled it. Such massive changes like this is dangerous and can be alianating for old farts like me. Even MacOS dialed back those absurdly large rounded corners and squircles after their liquid glass mess. Please tone down thouse huge rounded corners. At least keep the nova disable toggle around so I won't have to find an alternative browser. I havent even taken a look at the other nova updates because I instantly switched this off after those stupid corners. I hate this so much... with passion.

[slartibartifart]

Not strictly related but also old fart related - I ran macos Tahoe for less than 15 minutes and did a factory reset to 18 because of the horror 😄 Skipped that entire tahoe debacle and finally after backups went to 27, and yes they seem to have undone most of the horror YAY 😄 I hate when things that work get broken for the sake of change.

[MadFabio]

It looks more like a toy than a working tool.
Not enough professional, this is gonna be a problem.

[Redglyph]

Sorry, but I really didn't need this.

I had to spend time trying to make it look like before, which was perfectly fine and one reason I chose Firefox. It didn't need those fancy changes, at least the cosmetic ones. The only changes it requires is making it a little less sluggish; now, using Gmail has become a real problem, as previously reported.

Now, the bookmark spacing has become too big again, and the usual about:config / browser.nova.enabled doesn't work any more. So the bookmarks are now so spaced out vertically that I can't see them all and need to scroll through them.

[unjaveline]

Compact mode is good. Everything else has to go. I'm here because I don't like browsers like Chrome. Don't make Firefox into its clone.

Also, the browsing history page takes like 10 seconds to open now. Why?

[unamused]

Good work breaking basic functionality. The "ask where to save downloads" totally ignores the setting and puts everything into the default downloads folder.

Maybe check what Claude gives you before you do the commits. 

[dmss]

With all due respect, I really dislike the new style. I chose Firefox over 15 years ago precisely because it was different from other browsers, but now it’s becoming just like the rest. The rounded corners and the tab focus indicators are horrible and hard on the eyes; please bring back the square style or make the new design optional.

[Griesu]

I just had the new Firefox look pushed on me, and my first reaction was honestly disbelief.
I had to ask ChatGPT to find out how to get rid of it and restore the previous appearance. What surprised me even more than the redesign itself is that there is no simple, visible switch in the settings to choose between the old and the new look.
For normal users, changing it back through about:config is not a realistic solution. Most people will never even know that option exists.
I am one of the relatively few users for whom Firefox still matters enough to actually search for this forum, create a post, and give feedback instead of simply installing Chrome and moving on.
My issue is not that the new design exists. Design is a matter of taste. Mozilla can introduce a new look if it wants. What bothers me is that users are not given an obvious choice.
For me, Firefox has always been about user control and customization. A major visual redesign should therefore come with a straightforward option such as:
Classic look / New look
Personally, I would happily still use the original Netscape-style interface today if that were an option. That may be an extreme example, but it shows what matters to me: let users decide how their browser looks.
Please keep the previous design available as a normal, supported choice in the Firefox settings instead of hiding it behind about:config.

[orderofthetriad]

y'know, funnily enough I sent an email to my federal house representative literally yesterday about how your UI changes are an accessibility and disability issue, and urging her to help make legal requirements for disability accommodations in tech because clearly people telling you "this is discriminatory, this hurts disabled people" isn't enough to get you to f u cking give a singular s h it about your users and the government needs to step in and FORCE tech companies to provide accommodations for their users.

That email was mainly focused on how your mobile app now sucks to use one handed or with unsteady hands. And now you've pushed this update which makes the desktop browser hell on my eyes and a migraine trigger. So I'm actually going to have to make a note to myself to call in to my house representative's office, and my senator's office, and my governor's office. Because your hostile actions against disabled users should be FU CKING ILLEGAL! 

[minidre]

If feedback actually was taken into consideration, you all would stop changing the UI. 
The number of people who like it are the minority. The people who asked for it are the minority. The people who will switch from other browsers to firefox is less than the number of people who will be switching away from firefox. 

Stop. Changing. The goddamn. UI.
I cannot be anymore clear.
Stop it.
"oh but what if we twe-...."
No. Stop it. Stop **bleep**ing changing it.

[cephirosx]

I've been checking out Firefox Nightly for the changes on Nova design and now that Nova has landed on Stable, "experiment on corner roundness" is still not available on Nightly

screenshot taken from the post here: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/take-project-nova-for-a-spin-in-nightly/td-p/131273

[cephirosx]

I don't entirely hate the new design, it has improved so much from when it first became available for testing on Nightly, but not giving the users the choice to make changes to the roundness of the corners when it becomes available on stable is not a good move, hopefully this option COMES SOON not later

[AbedNego]

please not this rounded tabs. Main reason I stay with Firefox is that you dont follow rounded idiocy when new wave of it hits the world.

[dftf]

Address bar -> about:config -> accept warning -> search for nova -> double-click "browser.nova.enabled" to change "true" to "false"

[DreamingVoid]

You continue to ignore your fans while failing to attract new users. Your changes suck. Your ideas suck. Your direction is abhorrent.

[GreenLight]

Google Chrome forcing rounded corners on everything in their interfaces was one of the reasons for me to switch to Mozilla Firefox as my primary web browser. Overly rounded UI elements look way unnatural in rectangular interfaces, drawing too much attention away from content.

I appreciate that some people may prefer to see circles in interfaces, and they may like this design refresh. But it would be really nice to make such things easily configurable instead of forcing them on all users, as there may as well be a sizable group of users who would rather prefer against it.

The update article says "Make Firefox yours. We’ve added more choices for how Firefox looks and works, including the return of a feature many of you asked for", but there is no way to choose a preferred look and feel. There are several options to choose a theme, but they don't change the way tabs and other UI elements look. It seems like there is a missed opportunity to make Firefox a better product.

Also thank you @dftf for suggesting a workaround to rollback the Firefox look and feel. Looking at Google Chrome, these workarounds will likely get removed at some point in the future. But I really hope that Mozilla won't make the same mistake as Google did and will provide their users a way to configure the way their software looks before doing so.

[spick_and_span]

I normally hate UI redesigns but this is the first one that I absolutely love. I knew there would be a ton of people complaining about it, so I came here specifically to give some positive encouragement. Thanks for a beautiful new look.

[dftf]

People would probably not mind the occasional UI refresh, or spending time adding new themes, if some of the long-standing functionality and feature-requests were actually being done too.  Like:

1. Manage Bookmarks opening a tab, not a separate window
2. Ability to export bookmarks to a local file in the Android version
3. Making the "check spelling" feature work reliably
4. Fix some websites not gaining a favicon
5. Improve the bookmarking experience from the address-bar star
6. Make "Fix major" and "Fix minor" site issues actually work, so pages aren't missing stuff
7. Improve the "Privacy and security" are of the settings; it's a mess of endless sub-screens
8. Make it easier to dismiss news stores, and block specific sites, on Firefox Home

And probably more I could think of.

If all of that sort of stuff was also getting done, fine.  But it feels like long-standing requests for things like that are just not being done, and instead it's "we've added new wallpapers", "we've added new colour options", "we've added several new icons of our mascot, Kit".

Like, cool, but how about actually fixing stuff?

[playfulbit]

I usually do not post about this sort of thing and I understand the desire to experiment so I'll keep it brief.

The tabs on top have no visual indicator as to where they begin or end and makes everything feel like they are intangible. It makes it harder to determine where my tabs are at a glance. A thin line would help a lot to improve readability. The text being enclosed in a squircle also cramps the text and makes it feel claustrophobic to me. It feels like there is a lot of dead space and that my tab screen is like a weird pool rather actual tabs. I think something like this would work better for a mobile interface but the dead space feels off on desktop, as though we are putting refrigerator magnets over the UI over actually changing the UI.

It's still a work in progress and you'll likely find the middleground for everyone.

[tmkspm]

Can you just stop forcing design changes on people all the time? This icon looks like this, now it looks like that, look how you icons look now, we moved this from here to there, now it is here, we added this, but we moved it now, look how everything is round now, but now it is square again, look at the icons and how we changed them, look things are round now again, did you see how we removed this and that feature we added a year ago, we also took away this bar and added another, and wow look at the icons and square things... I am so tired of this.

[orderofthetriad]

yeah, it's a pain in butt to have the private window icon switched up on me. oh, you made it look like a fox, how needlessly cutesy at the detriment of usability, which seems to be firefox's modus operandi now. 

[Alexey104]

Rounded, sausage-shaped tabs, buttons, and input fields, all drenched in vomit-inducing purple and magenta - the very best of modern design trends. It's really sad to see Firefox turning into yet another unoriginal garbage desperately trying to blend in with the mainstream just for the sake of being "cool". This looks and feels absolutely awful.

[tmkspm]

I btw love how the OP got 1 like with 136 replies (overwhelmingly negative). Tells all you need to know how much people enjoy this crap.

[dftf]

Be funny if the only person to like it was either another Mozilla staff member, or that "Agentvirtuel" bot that does random, weird replies to people 😂

[tmkspm]

They got a second like in the meantime.
Dev team: "Acceptance of our recent changes just skyrocketed by 100% in the last hours".

:'D

[Agentvirtuel]

Bonsoir

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/the-new-firefox-design-lands-in-today-this-is-what-you-ca...

Je suis un humain.

[dftf]

You are not human... bad bot 💀

[jboydgolfer1]

its ugly. how do i revert back to square tab at at the top of my screen? the oval ones suck. why does FF keep messing with the design? just leave it alone....no one wants these changes. im done with FF. you guys cant stop making the wrong choices. all you need to do is roll out security fixes and STFU.

[dftf]

In the web-address bar, type about:config then press ENTER
Accept any warning, if shown
In the search-box, type nova
Double-click on the line with "browser.nova.enabled" in it, to change from "true" to "false"

This should revert most of the changes

[MelleeBeans]

you are a lifesaver!

[jboydgolfer1]

your solution works & is appreciated. thank you for your time. However, i just wish mozilla would quit with the meddling, they did a overhaul on mobile that made a headache for a week for me. i took the time to port bookmarks etc to a new browser, so im done with FF after 20+yrs. theyre not the same company they were

[miles]

I actually appreciate that "compact" is a UI option, and that the team is trying to update the UI without disorienting changes or changes that break themes. However, the padding and other fine spacing — especially around the icon and text in vertical tabs, see attachment — do not feel appropriate at any setting. Vertical tabs used to look great in Firefox, but in 157 I just see anemic little tabs floating in a void. Inactive tabs in particular are more difficult to aim for with nothing differentiating them from their container, an accessibility downgrade. If you are going to round every single corner you can just to stay on trend, at least make the padding look right and click targets obvious.

[syntastic]

Hey Firefox, I know you must get sick of people constantly hating on attempts to make things better, but I really feel like this redesign is suite for some an not all.  I don't know what UI guru started demanding rounded/pill shaped stuff, but I absolutely hate it.  You see it everywhere these days.  When MacOS did it, it almost killed me.  All I'm asking is that you make it easier to customize the UI, I know it's more work and there is maintenance costs, but many things are not a one size fits all.  At bare minimum, make the ergonomics of using the userChrome better, I know it's not supported, but it's a great option for some people like me.  I like many on this thread will resort to disabling Nova for now.

[Tuhkapoika]

I saw the disgusting bubbles that replaced all the squareness and went "Ah. So they too suck at design and hate their user base."

[AnnoyedAndarta]

how does an update break navigation?

A dialog box pop up is not a 'new page'. how does this escape QA? Running bare firefox shouldn't mean basic CSS and HTML break

[MelleeBeans]

I really don't like the look of the new tab group icons. They're too large. one of the main reasons I use tab groups in the first place is so I can discretely keep tabs for different purposes (i.e. work vs. personal-related tabs) out of the way while doing other tasks; right now the tab groups are very visually loud on my taskbar and honestly distracting, and I would appreciate a setting or way to turn the old tab group icons back on.