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.

[dhja]

there is a difference between what you identify as developers and what I mentioned. For engineers, leadership is engineering or product leadership. For companies, that is all development (R&D, IT, UX, or software). Someone somewhere is trying to justify their own or the software KPIs by making unnecessary cosmetic changes.

[JNavas]

> there is a difference between what you identify as developers and what I mentioned. For engineers, leadership is engineering or product leadership. 

I assure you that what I wrote is correct, based on my decades of experience running large software development organizations and knowledge of what happened at Mozilla.

[dhja]

very nice, it's great that you are providing a balanced response about this. Thank you

[roodypoo]

No. This is just misguided. UX teams have to justify their existence.  
This lady explains it well in a short:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/72j3uPq9dJA

[roodypoo]

Did you use AI to write this? Are you kidding? Your use case is everyone else's use case while using a browser: opening mutiple tabs and...doing things onilne. This is a nothingburger glaze post and says and adds nothing of value. 

[JNavas]

Was that a paid promotional endorsement? 🙄

[Agentvirtuel]

Bonjour

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/do-some-advertising-please/m-p/141563/highlight/true#M577...

[MozillaUser1234]

This and a thousand time this.

[Brez]

I liked version 3.6...

[Elle]

I'm so tired of all of this, so I make all Qdratish practices good! 

about:config

toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets

true

After this, create or add to the top of the file: 
\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxxxxxxx\chrome\userChrome.css

* { border-radius:0px !important; }

[JNavas]

Firefox ESR is a better solution. See Navas' Tips: Firefox UI Debacle 

[Agentvirtuel]

Bonjour

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

[ffsfirefox]

Removing every corner for the sake of removing every corner triggers me every time I see it. I actually switched to linux because of that, to make things look more retro and I like it. But if applications downgrade their UI there is literally really nothing I can do about it and it sucks.

[JNavas]

The best solution to the ugly, less functional Nova UI (at least for the next year) is to switch from regular Firefox to Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release), which retains the classic Proton UI and is also more stable. See Navas' Tips: Firefox UI Debacle

[GStrange]

My sentiments, exactly. Perhaps with more of the message in ALL CAPS. 

[Glnn]

Hello my love wife coming 

[AprilP]

Couldn't agree more - it's like let's do the things that make people hate Windows and update spam them with them!   Force 'features' on us instead of ask if we want them or giving us the choice to not activate them when browser launches after update.  I have wanted 0 of them and as with Windows have had to waste time trying to work out how to undo them.  One made my tabs display at bottom, wasn't able to find a solution in 15-20 minutes so opted for manually opening tabs at the top as a workaround.  The oval framing is less functional, smaller text size, frame competes with text visually,  and more precise aiming to target X to close.  Can still read and close it but now it requires focus.  Were users clamoring for a frame?   So today I have a tab open and type in the upper search bar.  A Tab icon appears at left side of search and search doesn't work.  So I try center search and it doesn't work either.  I didn't want to close all my tabs to be able to search and eventually worked out that the tab icon has a drop down menu where I could select search.  For the love of sanity .. .   

I had 0 problems and was completely happy with Firefox before update spam started.  All I ever wanted was security updates.  Is there a stripped version we can download?  

[cadwellm]

You could try the Firefox fork called Waterfox - that's what I went to. It has Nova but the settings allow you to choose which version use: Nova, Proton, or Photon. 

[JNavas]

The best solution to the ugly, less functional Nova UI (at least for the next year) is to switch from regular Firefox to Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release), which retains the classic Proton UI and is also more stable. See Navas' Tips: Firefox UI Debacle

p.s. Forks of Firefox are less secure and stable than Firefox ESR.

[MarshWiggle]

Yes! I'd like some bug fixes combined with a stable interface. 

[JNavas]

The best solution to the ugly, less functional Nova UI (at least for the next year) is to switch from regular Firefox to Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release), which retains the classic Proton UI and is also more stable. See Navas' Tips: Firefox UI Debacle

p.s. Forks of Firefox are less secure and stable than Firefox ESR.

[Agentvirtuel]

Bonjour

See also, this discussion thread https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/how-to-disable-this-disturbing-nova-design/td-p/139558

[axol]

I don't like this rounded corner design. It looks very uncomfortable and awkward. I hope the square tab design can be changed back, or at least allow us to choose.

[dftf]

Web-address bar -> about:config -> ENTER -> search for nova -> double-click the line "browser.nova.enabled" -> "true" should change to "false"

UI should get reverted, until a future Firefox update removes that setting, or stops it working

[fo]

Thank you so much! I also turned off auto updates.

[dftf]

I wouldn't recommend turning-off the updates, as there could be a security issue then that you won't get patched for.

You'd be better off downloading the "ESR" version of Firefox from https://www.firefox.com/download/all/desktop-esr/ , uninstalling your current Firefox v157.0, restart your PC, then install the ESR version.  Then you'll still get security-fixes, but you won't get the new UI for around a year.

Might be worth backing-up your passwords, bookmarks and history before doing this, just in case: Menu > Settings > Account and Synchronisation > Turn on backup (unless you're already using it).  Then if your stuff is missing after you first start the ESR version, go back to that screen and use the "Restore your data" option to bring it back in

[tmkspm]

I wish they had two branches: one for their design crap and one for security and you can subscribe to either.

The way now you either get their design crap trojan horsed with security or you reject it all and go naked security wise.

[dftf]

Technically, they do: "beta" (one version ahead), "developer edition" (two versions ahead) and "nightly" (the most aggressively up-to-date) is where they test stuff.

Once they get feedback from those versions and something seems okay, it then makes it into the stable release.  The ESR versions are for those who want change less-often.

[SodaPop]

Well, the dev and beta tester feedback is NOT WORKING.  They just rolled out a UI update that made my browser trick me into believing I was having a nightmare where I was trapped in the new Barbie movie.

[wp]

Well last couple of updates made FF much worse. It's unstable, slow, ugly. I use this browser for more than 20 years and I really struggle to remember when it was this bad. So no, I'm not worried about missing security updates. I'm more afraid that an update will make it even worse. Looks like AI has taken over the development... at least I hope it's the AI's fault. 

I thank you for the info about config flag. That helped a little. 

[SodaPop]

If AI did this, it was hallucinating.  

Even the AI slop normally doesn't get this bad.

If actual people did this...well, same thing.  

Don't do drugs, kids.  Drugs are bad.

[Basic204]

I don't care how bad the security fix is if they are gonna do this rounded stuff I'll just not update. 

[Roze]

If they stopped making the user experience so much worse with every patch, maybe that would be an option. 

At least I got back the ctrl+up/down keys for quick-switching search engines. Thank god.

[TexanTom]

'You'd be better off downloading the "ESR" version of Firefox "....OR....start using BRAVE as your default browser as this is making me ready to dl.

[CQA]

Don't recommend brave. It's got all kinds of even worse problems than Firefox. https://thelibre.news/no-really-dont-use-brave/

[odintsaq]

Thanks a lot! That was an eye-saver!

[verydispleased]

Why should users hack their own browser, profiles, power users use more than one profile and hack each of them to make Firefox regular again? Such option must be in UI and change optional. not this. This is wrong.

[dftf]

I agree, but it's unlikely Firefox will revert the new UI so you have two choices:

1. Make the change I suggested in about:config

2. Download the latest 153.4.0 "ESR" release of Firefox, uninstall your current 157.0, restart your PC, then install the ESR version.  Then you won't have the new UI for around a year from now, until you get moved to a newer ESR.  Clearly that is more work though, and probably best to use the "Backup" option in Menu > Settings > Account and Synchronisation before removing 157.0 to ensure you don't lose anything in the move!

[SodaPop]

I would add a 3rd option to that list: switch to Vivaldi!

I did, and it is AWESOME.  No more bubble tabs, no more psychedelic gradients, no more weird UI stuff...I set my appearance to rectangles only (no rounded corners at all), and straight black/white/gray color palette.  It looks and functions exactly like a browser should - unobtrusive, invisible, just sitting there in the background serving up webpages like it's supposed to.

[dftf]

Vivaldi is also the only major browser developed and owned in 🇪🇺 Europe too (🇳🇴 + 🇮🇸)

(🇺🇸: Brave; Chrome; Edge; Firefox; Safari. 🇳🇴 🇨🇳: Opera: HQ in Norway, but majority Chinese-owned)