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.

[dftf]

You:

Maybe I’m in the minority, but I actually like the new design overall.

---

This post:

👍🏻 6 to 💬 400

It would certainly seem that way! 😂

[sebby300]

I've been using Firefox for years and this is the first time I felt the need to give feedback about a change because it really rubbed me the wrong way.

Sweeping UI changes (changing shapes of elements, AND colour across the entire web browser) should always be optional, especially if they serve no functional purpose.

I'm sure somebody loves the new saturated tab outlines and rounded tabs, and the weirdly high contrast black on the settings screen, but I immediately felt distracted by them. The ad for this update is that Firefox is "the good old internet", but part of what I hate about the "new" internet is companies just forcing arbitrary changes (like the aesthetic changes) onto every user for no apparent reason. There is no good reason for the user why changes like these are forced. None.

Firefox is bragging about giving the user so much ability to customize there experience, such as disabling AI features (which is great by the way! We should be given those sorts of options) but then it turns around and slaps a new, distracting theme onto the entire browser without asking the user to opt in if they want to, and with the only way to turn it off being in some hidden config setting (which apparently might not always be an option?)

It's very much exactly like the "new" internet and nothing like what people loved about the "old" internet. Let superficial things like themes be fully customizable by the user, and don't change it for everyone for no reason. Sure, develop colourful and unique themes if you want but it should be an option for those people who specifically want to use something like that, not just a new default look for everyone. It's, frankly, incredibly out of touch. Some people won't care and that's fine, I'm happy for them, but it's this kind of attitude that makes modern technology so frustrating to use: changes are forced onto people at seemingly random times for seemingly no benefit. I often wonder how people would feel if they bought a hammer, and then every couple of years the company that made the hammer would just go into their home and replace it with a slightly different hammer, with a different size, weight, shape, and colour, and just be like "We updated your hammer! You're welcome!" That would be pretty fricken annoying if you were used to how that tool felt, or if you picked it instead of another hammer because you liked the colours, or whatever. It's insane that the culture of software development includes this baked in expectation that the developers not only should regularly overhaul the look of things, but has the right to do so and force that change onto everyone who uses the software. It's just absurd to me, really, but it's the culture we are in right now. I want Firefox to actually distance itself from that kind of culture and put users first.

Anyway, thank you for listening to my rant. Apparently I needed to get that off my chest.

TLDR: Don't force superficial UI changes onto users, because it can alienate people and it serves no practical purpose. Make UI changes like that a clear option that users can opt into if they wish: no one is going to complain about customization options, what sucks is being forced to accept a completely arbitrary change.

[slartibartifart]

You're not alone feeling like this. Thank you for this rant because it puts into words my frustrations.

[slartibartifart]

I got up especially early this morning - 05:30am because it was forecast to be a rainy morning, and my commute to the office could easily go from being 25 minutes, to well over an hour. 
Before I left for work, I whipped out my macbook as usual to check the traffic one last time before heading out. This morning though was different because somehow, over night my trusty browser had been replaced by someone's LSD induced hallucination of where firefox used to be. 

I didn't check the traffic or leave for work, I googled WTF happened to firefox??!

Then found out about this nova thing. I honestly don't need this kind of crap in my life. I've already abandoned every other browser because of bloat and this and that and the other thing, and now you too?

How can your dev team or who ever the F it is that makes design decisions be so utterly tone deaf to think that this kind of crap is what your user base wants? We are screaming for keep it simple, keep it light, stop screwing around, keep focus, fix bugs, improve performance. 

What the hell do we matter though? Here, have this ridiculously ugly, tacky piece of **bleep** new interface and screw you if you don't like it. What you have lost sight of is that we-the users hold the power. Keep screwing around like this and you're all going to be destitute. 

P.S. I've been a fan since NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR days, so put that in your vape and smoke it. If you've become this deaf to your users needs you're utterly stuffed. 

[SodaPop]

100%

You read my mind.  This is exactly it.

[slartibartifart]

darn streight. I'm thinking of getting some coffee later and going outside to shout at some clouds too if anyone wants to join.

[cmcallister]

I use Firefox Multi-Account containers mostly for categorizing what tabs are for, especially at work. The new Nova design greatly reduces their visual effectiveness.

1. Moving the highlighted edge to the top for no reason makes the change jarring
2. While it seems like the colors have as many options, the variance between them is greatly reduced, making orange and yellow tabs basically indistinguishable along with blue/green, etc.
3. Removing the in-fill of colors in the icons makes them harder to recognize
4. making the tabs rounded (why? all this does is make more wasted space in my thin sidebar where I don't want wasted space) reduces the amount of space for tab colors to display, exacerbating the problem with poor color differentiation

I normally haven't really cared about the UI changes y'all have made over the years and actually enjoyed the Quantum upgrade immensely. Nova, though, just seems like a C-suite **bleep** show idea to have change for the sake of change nobody was asking for.

I have turned `browser.nova.enabled` to false and will keep it so until you remove the option. Should you do that I will most likey jump ship to Zen at work like I do on my personal machines.

[Lisq]

ALL THESE CHANGES ARE UGLY AND YOU MAKE FIREFOX WORSE AND WORSE. HOW CAN I REVERT THESE CHANGES? I DONT WANT THEM. GIVE ME A SINGLE WAY TO UNDO THESE CHANGES OR I AM CHANGING BROWSER

[dftf]

To reverse the changes:

In the web-address bar type about:config then press ENTER
Accept any warning, and continue
In the search-box on the next screen, type nova
Look for the line "browser.nova.enabled" and double-click it so "true" becomes "false"

That should undo most of the changes

[Lisq]

BTW YOU SHOULD RATHER FIX ANDROID FIREFOX - EVERY SINGLE TIME I SWITCH APPS FOR A SECOND (FOR EXAMPLE TO GET A VERIFICATION CODE FROM MY EMAIL) MY FIREFOX REFRESHES THE PAGE. IT IS SO FRUSTRATING AND MAKES REALLY UNABLE TO USE

[dftf]

If you have an older phone, with a low amount of RAM (thesedays 4GB or less, so a phone from around say 2021 or older), then Android will force apps out of memory, causing them to refresh when opened.

The best ways to avoid this are: close other apps in the background; only have Firefox and your e-mail app open.  And in Firefox itself, make sure you don't have lots of websites still open in the background -- the number inside the box after the address bar is the number of websites you have open in the background.  Tap that, and close any you are no-longer using.

[andyman1222]

No one:

Software corporations for some reason: BRO we really need to UPDATE OUR UI it's been like 5 minutes LET'S ROUND SOME CORNERS!

If there were a plethora of customization tweaks for this new UI built directly into the settings menu, I would be all for it. There aren't, beyond changing the colors.

I complain about how Google removes 90 degree corners in their UI. I use StyleBot with `border-radius: 0 !important` to force no round corners (Google STILL finds ways around the CSS, WHY). Now Firefox wants to roundize their own UI? NO, I WOULD USE CHROME IF I WANTED A ROUND UI.

The previous UI isn't much better, but at least there's some resemblance of rectangles instead of ovals.

[NekoNegde]

After more than 20 years with Firefox, this is the first time I felt the need to complain. Those curves are **bleep**ing ugly.

[dftf]

If you haven't done-so already: URL bar -> about:config -> ENTER -> accept warning -> search nova -> "browser.nova.enabled" change to "false" to undo most of the recent UI changes

[Firefux]

Please just stop. "Softer tab shapes." Did someone ask for this? Did a kid get cut on the tabs? I've never liked how the Google Chrome tabs look, so stop trying to emulate failure. 

Also, why did you change the color of everything? I use a theme for my browser, in addition to other addons that update certain websites. I don't need you to make everything purple. You're actually not helping. If you would like to introduce a cool new theme, please present an OPTION when the update launches. Let us see it with and without, and make a decision to use it. NEVER turn on some new option without an explicit setting to disable it. I should never have to use the about:config to fix the terrible ideas you have. 

I'm sure there's probably some decent things in this update, but you've presented the worst idea the loudest. Please rethink your business strategy. 

[dftf]

1. You can undo the recent changes: URL bar -> about:config -> ENTER -> accept warning -> search nova -> "browser.nova.enabled" change to "false"

2. Consider switching to the ESR version (https://www.firefox.com/download/all/desktop-esr/) if you want a Firefox that gets security fixes, but new features and UI changes only about once-a-year

[Sparatan117]

As a web dev and Mac User, I LOVE THIS NEW DESIGN. 

**bleep** the haters, this is the best looking Firefox update in a while. Bravo!

[orderofthetriad]

well F U C K you too! You can have this design and we can have the design we want, both can happen if the people at firefox actually GAVE A S H I T ABOUT PROVIDING OPTIONS FOR USERS! Vapid aesthetic loving loser. 

[dftf]

That's probably because tabs being one line, with only the current (active) tab having any sort of border or highlight is a very macOS-style way to do UI.

On Windows or Linux, it isn't.  So it may look normal to you, but it doesn't to others.  But it's likely most of the Firefox developers use a Mac, hence they prefer what they know.  Same reason that Arc browser only supported macOS initially; it's what everyone in their team used.

[Sparatan117]

I mean I get what you're saying, and once upon a time I would have been in the same boat, but honestly the fav icon and X being displayed creates a natural tab negative space that makes it really easy to see where one tab ends and the next begins.

I'm definitely for people having options though, and they probably didn't consider people wouldn't think the same way they did when they created this. 

Also I use Linux, MacOS, and Windows every single day... so I'm indifferent to each different style.... although my Linux DEs are always KDE Plasma so there's that.

[Bogdan_]

As a web dev and Mac user, you may love a bunch of long sausage-shaped objects right in front of a face.

But I prefer a cohesive user experience over pointless decorations.

[Sparatan117]

Lol the user experience is the same, it just got more aesthetically pleasing. 

You need some zen in the middle of a stressful day to help balance out the stress of deadlines and problem solving. Embrace it!

Also, no... I saw my fair share of sausages when I served for 6 years. Good on that front. 

[orderofthetriad]

"it just got more aesthetically pleasing" do you understand the difference between "objective" and "subjective"? You're acting like the look is objectively better when it's just your subjective opinion. You are not the true arbiter of aesthetic, you're just one dude with an opinion that can't wrap your head around the reality that you're not the main character here. You have an opinion which a lot of people here disagree with. 

"Lol the user experience is the same," maybe for you, but for me the new user experience is if I try to go into the- now extremely high contrast- settings menu I will get a migraine. It's not an opinion that'll I'll get a migraine, it is an objective fact. People with disabilities exist and a lot of changes firefox has made this past year are extremely hostile against them. You should try and consider learning that other people are actually people and not NPCs, you self centered weirdo. 

"You need some zen in the middle of a stressful day to help balance out the stress of deadlines and problem solving." like the stress of trying to problem solve how to use the settings menu without getting a migraine? You might find this ui "zen," but for many it has now become a source of stress, not a solution to it. 

[Mop]

How to I get rid of that lavender tint in the top tool bars?

[ItsWempo]

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-proton/

Please note this doesn't completely revert nova

[dftf]

To revert most of nova:

Address bar -> type about:config -> ENTER -> accept any warning -> search for nova -> double-click the line "browser.nova.enabled" -> "true" changes to "false"

Should then get mostly undone

[Firerox]

I use vertical tabs and this update changed container markers from logical and beautiful short vertical lines that formed one colorful line to ugly horizontal fence of lines across all tab fence. It's absolutely rediculous! Looks terrible, overloads interface visually and unecessarly takes precios space. And all that was made just to fit in rounded corners. Nonsense!!

[dftf]

If you haven't already done so, revert most of the recent UI changes by going to about:config (type that in the URL bar, then press ENTER) and search for "browser.nova.enabled" and change it to "false"

[p-n-s]

This new UI is godawful... At least it can be reverted (for the time being). Also who though that changing the design and theme/colours without being asking the user was going to go down well?

At the very least ask if I want to change the theme before doing it! 

I really hope they go back to the drawing board with this design... or even better, DROP it altogether and focus on more important things. 

[Antares]

What you point out was also something that irritated me to no end. Just how arrogant can one bloody be as a dev to force a new theme / design on a user, who will often have a custom skin for good reason, rather than just point out the new looks and offer to switch?!

[cephirosx]

On the original discussions thread where they were asking for feedback when Nova was first made available on nightly, lots of users already said that they (including me) don't like the design, sure they did improve lots of the design overtime but they still ignored most of the request to

1 allow reverting to the old theme

2 make an option to change the roundness of the corners

I think if they didn't pushed hard for the overly rounded design a lot more people (including me) would have accepted the new design more

[ItsWempo]

Stop harrassing me

[dftf]

If you mean the constant pop-up notifications and e-mails after posting on this site, go to

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/user/myprofilepage/tab/user-subscriptions:notification-settings 

And then tick all of the following:

Turn off all push notifications
Turn off all email notifications
Turn off all real-time pop-up notifications
Turn off all mobile notifications

Scroll to the bottom and click Save

[dftf]

To turn-off the constant pop-up notifications and e-mails after you post on this site, go to

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/user/myprofilepage/tab/user-subscriptions:notification-settings

And then tick all of the following:

Turn off all push notifications
Turn off all email notifications
Turn off all real-time pop-up notifications
Turn off all mobile notifications

Scroll to the bottom and click Save

[cephirosx]

The container color indicator on this new design NEEDS TO BE CHANGED, why is it now a line on top of the bar and it doesn't look good with the rounded corner especially when the tab is pinned.

Since the pinned tab is just a circle now the color indicator is just now a tiny line above which is not very visible, why not extend the line to the corners or be the color of the whole tab or the border of the tab

[Pagz]

I do not like the new tab shapes. They look like buttons now. I would like the option to switch back to the classic tab shape in my settings. 

[dftf]

Address bar -> type about:config -> press ENTER -> accept any warning shown -> search for nova -> double-click line "browser.nova.enabled" -> "true" changes to "false"

Change should get mostly undone

[Basic204]

Can you please un do this I really don't want rounded tabs and the U.I. looks really bad now. Please just give me an option to revert so I don't have to deal with the way this looks. 

[dftf]

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

Change should get mostly undone

[FirefoxUser8]

I have submitted an idea to better distinguish regular and Private windows. Please consider.

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/clearer-distinctions-of-colour-for-private-window-s/idi-p/14028...