cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

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

AshleyT
Employee
Employee

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.

763 REPLIES 763

asdf_
Making moves

> bringing a cleaner

Nope.

> more cohesive

Lol? If "cohesive" means "in line with Mozilla's strategy to drive away its last remaining users"

> and more adaptable experience

Right, that's why it's the default experience with no simple opt-out. Adaptable means "we'll shove this update down your throats and you'll like it"?

> It is still the Firefox you know and trust, with the same commitment to independence, privacy, customization, and user control.

Are you even reading what you write...? What better way to retain trust than to force a UI update nobody asked for, that can't be customized and removes user control, and then lie about it to our faces?

Seriously, what is wrong with your organization and its priorities?

wenceslost
Making moves

Forgive me if this is not the right place to leave this feedback, but I've found the updated icons and colors for containers to be less useful than the previous designs.

In my opinion, the design of the containers interface should be geared toward quick identification of the correct container that one wants to use. The previous design, shown in this screenshot from the containers Support page, accomplished this well by using mostly filled icons and bold colors very easy to differentiate from one another.

2026-09-05-04-59-30-c2d798.png

 The new interface has changed in two main ways: the icons are now all outlines with shaded backgrounds, with no filled icons (they are also simplified, but I have no quarrel with that choice), and the colors are now much more similar to each other. This can be seen in the following screenshots from my own browser (personal info redacted), below. Notably, the new tab interface seems to use dark mode on my device regardless of Firefox's settings.

 

3firefox.png4firefox.png5firefox.png2firefox.png

Interestingly, the "Always Open Site in Container" interface from the Multi-Account Containers extension seems to use a light theme regardless of system settings (I cannot recall if this was the case previously or not) and while it uses the new icons, it uses a different set of more bold.

1firefox.png

I have a couple thoughts on the new design:

  1. Despite the statement in this thread that "The updated design brought bolder color choices to Firefox", these colors are clearly less bold than the previous colors. This makes them more difficult to differentiate from each other when attempting to select the correct container.
  2. The color-shaded circles behind each icon reduce the contrast between the icon and the background, making them less visually legible, particularly at a glance.
  3. The bolder colors of the Multi-Account Container extension's interface are much easier for me to differentiate than those of the other container interfaces. Among the light and dark themes of the other interfaces, the light theme colors are easier to differentiate than the dark theme colors due to higher contrast even with the reduced contrast of the shaded circles.
  4. Though outlined icons have been in the tech graphics trend for some time, I would argue that in this use, filled icons would be a better choice. If the goal of these icons is for users to quickly differentiate their containers by color and shape, filled icons will give a stronger sense of both to the user, allowing them to more quickly determine their intended container.
  5. The icons in the new tab interface are not sized the same as the icons in the container settings compared to their shaded circles. This makes the icons in the new tab interface appear somewhat sloppy.
  6. I have yet to do an analysis comparing the performance of the previous color palette to the new color palette in terms of their color blindness accessibility. Though, I suspect that both palettes would not perform well, I'm certain the new palette would perform worse given that my own non-color blind vision is having increased difficulty differentiating them.

Overall, these are my recommendations for improving readability and ease-of-use:

  1. Remove the shaded circles behind icons.
  2. Choose a color palette that a) contrasts more strongly with the background, b) contrasts more strongly with each other, and c) performs better for people with color vision issues.
  3. Switch to filled, rather than outlined icons.
  4. Fix the different interfaces not following light/dark themes and unify the colors across built-in containers and the extension (if these bugs are actually my own errors, please let me know).
  5. Nice to have (even from before this update): More color choices and more icons, yay!

In my opinion, the updated design of the container icons and colors seems to put form ahead of function to the detriment of the user.

AnonymousGoblin
Making moves

Thanks, I hate it. I hate it all.

  • The color gradient theme: No option to restore what I had before — not even so much as an option to NOT have a color gradient at all.
  • Browser tabs: Yet again not having clear separation nor borders, while also appearing as free-floating. It seems the developers went so far as to remove the options.  Does Mozilla just hate people like me?
  • I swear the font size for the bars keeps shrinking with every "revamp". I'm vision-impaired, by the way.
  • Toolbar: No, I didn't have nor did I want the sidebar button added to my toolbar. So now I have to undo it. Again. Quit automatically adding stuff to my toolbar!
  • Menu bar: Pretty sure I didn't have the annoying "Profiles" menu option in the menu bar previously, but either way I don't want it. And no customize option to remove optional and unwanted menu bar clutter...
  • Overall style: Why does everything have to be rounded and looking flat as a pancake?! Give native options here instead of forcing users to search online for solutions!

I've had to do some searching online and so far every article is saying the same thing: Telling me to go into about:config and basically disable anything with "nova" in it, since that is apparently the design name for this piece of turd. Unfortunately, doing so does not fix every problem with "Nova" (not even close).

"Firefox is becoming more customizable," — Lies

MozillaUpsetsMe
Making moves

Please don't force UI updates, the nova looks so bad and feels like you're just trying to fit in with what you think looks futuristic but nobody asked for this. Please make it optional in the future.

Defpotec
Making moves

As designs shift, I've gotten more and more annoyed by anything with round corners. It feels as if I'm treated as an infant who needs a user interface baby-proofed. This becomes doubly so insulting when the Firefox update page prominently directs me to a button in which I can custom tailor my UI experience and there's no available toggle or slider to assign the degree of sharpness of corner.

I should never feel required to dive into the about:config section just to return to a begrudging degree of UI acceptability. Even the previous design has corners, not sharp edges, in my browser tabs and mouse hovers. I simply want my UI to look as flat and sharp as a rectangle in Geometry class. Please let me have that.

anotherBob
Making moves

At this point, there has been nothing done to address the negative criticism in any way that is meaningful to me, and it looks like Mozilla is committed to this UI and will be disabling the only thing that would make me consider staying in Firefox. 
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2071454

I will share my final thoughts, even though I don't particularly feel like my feedback or much of the other feedback I've read is being valued outside of requests for very specific adjustments within Nova. I enjoyed Firefox because of the ability to customize. I do not actually enjoy customizing. Once I customize something to my liking, I do not like having to reconfigure it again. So I am switching something allowing customization that offers an option of a mature UI that is less prone to updates. I get that it can be necessary sometimes, but I don't see that necessity here. Additionally, it shipped with numerous bugs in place, and is going to continue to roll out updates to the UI for the immediate future, meaning any customization I do now may or may not require rework.

I quite literally feel tired when thinking about the myriad of tiny adjustments over time that I would need to do to retain what I consider a functional and aesthetically pleasing UI/UX. I am sure that whatever plan you settle down with will probably have some long term stability after a little while, but I don't know how long that little while is going to be. I am actually a little sad. I originally got Firefox somewhere in the ballpark of 17 or 18 years ago. Even in that time, there had been disruptive updates, but I had felt some confidence that it was necessary under the hood to justify the disruption, so I stuck with it. I don't have that same confidence now.

I get the impression that Mozilla is hoping that UI/UX changes might help draw in more users. I genuinely wish you well in that regard and hope you cut into Chrome's market share with the flaming sword of Michael. The bottom line is that Firefox is no longer my browser.

I hope this feedback provides useful information and perspective about why at least this long-time user has decided to leave.

JimmyKills
Making moves

I very much dislike this new UI design, it makes things look like a crap version of browsers I have opted out of using. I dislike the ovalization, I dislike that tabs feel hidden IN THE TAB BAR because they BLEND IN WHEN THEY ARE NOT THE FOCUSED TAB, and I very much dislike that there is no option to revert to a more classic look. Even IF someone made a theme to mimic some of it the more preferable will always be just being able to default out of this crap. 

hempshark
Making moves

as for a person that uses firefox from first release this update is an insult. total f up and disregards of any option for users to use old design, and new design is, oooohhh boy, if you think it WOWSY new guys will show up, nah yo f'd up. seems like I will search for a firefox fork from someone who doesn't do this. Just imagine, this change was so bad that I had to use shady login system to find some kind of form to reply. that's speaks alot. 

cadwellm
Making moves

Here is my feedback on this abysmal Nova update:

  • It's lousy looking with the rounded tabs
  • The rounded tabs make it more difficult to click into when one has a disability because there is less usable space because the corners are gone
  • I was using a dark theme that I liked and used for years, all the text on the tabs was white as was the outline on the active tab - but nova made the white text and outline on the active tab turn black so I couldn't read it. Meaning I had to waste my time hunting down a different dark theme I could use that wouldn't do this
  • Where is the easy way to opt out of this crap?
  • I went to about:config and turned Nova off. 
  • First came the really stupid 'Smart Window' and made my theme turn purple and took me directly to Google Search...how useless is that! And now this Nova crap.
  • You do realize there are other browsers out there...don't you? I can easily start using a Firefox fork and get rid of FireFox entirely. What will Firefox do if enough people jump ship?
  • STOP with the crappy looks and start working on the important stuff like keeping your users safe. LEAVE our setups alone! If we want square tabs then we should be able to have square tabs - just remember, not everyone is using Firefox on their **bleep** phone!

    Update: I just cloned Waterfox to be just like my Firefox. If Firefox doesn't change the UI back to the way it should be, and removes the option in about:config to change NOVA to false, then I will be enjoying my Waterfox browser instead.

mjlamont
Making moves

God why would you go for "softer tab shapes". Let us decide what our tabs look like, I hate this. 

ChuckTheNinja
Making moves

Congrats to this update for being the update that made me turn off auto updates

Edit: Oh my god I might just jump ship. You people actually made your forums auto subscribe to any post you comment on. You actually think people want a notification for every single post someone else makes that is not even in reply to them. You are incompetent. 

yeap....nightmare. Had to come turn off all the subscriptions.  One way to get users to participate is to force them to.


You people actually made your forums auto subscribe to any post you comment on. You actually think people want a notification for every single post someone else makes that is not even in reply to them.


Yes, the decision to default to "notify me on the site about absolutely every update" and "e-mail me about every single update" is really baffling.

E-mails should default to "when someone replies to me" or "when an answer is chosen to a question I post, or have subscribed to".  And for notifications on here, I'd say it's fine to default to "when someone replies to a post I've also replied on", but a notification for every Kudos (aka Like) is crazy!

You can manage them here:
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/user/myprofilepage/tab/user-subscriptions:notification-settings 

Tick all of these...
Turn off all push notifications
Turn off all email notifications
Turn off all real-time pop-up notifications
Turn off all mobile notifications
...then scroll to the bottom and tap Save and enjoy the silence!

purplegori
Making moves

please for the love of god just roll this kind of thing out with a toggle. i don't quite care what direction you guys want the UI to go in, just make sure people can roll back to a previous version if they want.

e674h12v3a
Making moves

I've never posted here before, but the rounded sides made me want to say something. The less rounded buttons and tabs looked better, these new tab sides are making me stare in a bad way. The other issue I've noticed, is that the new tab page, settings and maybe other page colors are purple, they don't change with the selected theme, so you get a visual mismatch. That makes me not want to use anything other than the default theme, for these reasons I find it difficult to enjoy the new look. On a side note, a plain light and dark theme would still be nice if you didn't want the gradient.

I'd like to add one thing, it seems to look decent to me on the light theme, I don't know why. My recommendation would be a new setting to selected how rounded you want the corners. You could go from full squared to partly rounded to full rounded like these. I'd say it's better to have choice here.

Its-a-me
Making moves

Fine, you want it to look modern; I respect that!  So meet me in the middle here; give me a disable/enable feature.  Respect goes both ways.

He visto varios comentarios que hablan sobre respeto... pero me pregunto si Mozilla Firefox respetó a su base de usuarios que no participaban en este foro antes de implementar la aberración de "Nova". Si la gente dice que respeta opiniones y no respetan la capacidad de personalización de su propio navegador, entonces ellos desde un principio no están respetando a nadie y hay que tenerlo en consideración.

---

I have seen several comments that talk about respect... but I wonder if Mozilla Firefox respected its user base that did not participate in this forum before implementing the aberration of "Nova". If people say they respect opinions and do not respect the customization capacity of their own browser, then they are not respecting anyone from the beginning and that has to be taken into consideration.

I agree.  I've looked into this and there was a lot of push back on Nova during the development. To touch on your 'do they have respect for the user base'  I think if you follow there history and philosophy of the project management they have followed a opt-out policy.  This is not respecting the user base.   I can list over a dozen Firefox "features"  that have rubbed me wrong over the last 10 years but the 3 that have had long lasting feelings if Mozilla cares are,  PPA Meta partnership, AI Integrations and Sponsored Search Suggestions.  These three were enabled by default, again a Opt-Out policy.  They have to focus on making money.  I do not agree with what they are doing but I understand why they are doing it.  I don't know how strict they are here with staying on topic but I feel you can't talk about Nova unless you talk about the past issues also.

YvannaIrie
Making moves

I do not like this change. Right of the bat, I can suddenly fit way fewer tabs at the top of my screen ebcause there is an enormous 100px gap between each element because you chose the MOST rounded possible shape and still retain a giant margin between tabs that are out of focus. Your own container tab visual indicator doesn't fit and bugs out with the new tabs, your new menu no longer aligns with the edge of the screen and has giant margins because, again, you chose the most enormous round for all the corners for reasons that completely elude me. The buttons on this site have a perfectly adequate amount of round. Why are we wasting so much visual space?

If you wanted to have more space on touch screens, why did you not make rounded buttons an option? Why is Firefox wasting so much screen real estate on desktop also?

In fact, why even add a compact mode if there's still 75px of wasted space between each tab because, again, you chose to implement a full round edge for all elements.

Your left and right hands don't know what they're doing. 

GunWi
Making moves

What is the point of these rounded corners and  (maybe use the derogatory German term *Klickibunti*) these unnecessary, flashy color gimmicks?
It’s the first thing you see—and it doesn’t look good; it certainly isn’t an improvement.

Quite the opposite: the rounded icons everywhere waste screen space, even if only a little.
After all, I don’t go around rounding off the corners of my physical photographs.


Give us back our corners! 😐 
Or at least give us the choice.

orderofthetriad
Familiar face

Screenshot (2501).png

ok so now even the right click menu for tabs is a fu cking migraine trigger for me. Even switching to light theme won't fix it. I can't use firefox anymore, it's no longer safe to use.  Fu ck every single person at mozilla responsible for this s hit, your actions are reprehensible, your hostility towards disabled people is blatantly fu cking apparent and absolutely abhorrent.

p_n
Making moves

Someone just hacked the Mozilla Foundation, but to distract from the real damage, they also changed the browser's appearance to piss people off.
WTF is this? 

p_n_0-1791019640139.png

p_n
Making moves

Some sort of solution
about:config -> browser.nova.enabled = false

But this should be accessible from the user interface, a configuration accessible to everyone. Enabling these roundings and other (**bleep** questionable and useless) "improvements" should be optional. After updating the browser, users should be asked whether they want the old look or the new (screwed-up) one.

Justaminute
Making moves

The new design is NOT clearer, the rounded corners interfere with the square or rectangular edges of most boxes and images — it only adds 'noise' to the screen!!

A clear design is one that passes unnoticed and uses familiar Icons — instead of 'novelty' for the sake of 'novelty' which only creates distraction!!

Justaminute
Making moves

I found a way to revert to a NORMAL, 'square', and unintrusive browser that lets you concentrate on whatever you are doing — instead of wanting to make its presence known.

Go to about:config and toggle browser.nova.enabled, pdfjs.enableNova, and sidebar.revamp to 'false' and you'll get your familiar Firefox browser back to what it should look like!!!

 

Thank you for pointing out the sidebar.revamp flag! I'd already disabled all flags containing "nova", but didn't think to filter for "revamp". My history window looks and feels so much better already now that it's back to normal.

Aha, this fixed it - thanks!

Justaminute
Making moves

My last post about this subject (for now) :

The reason I use Firefox is because it is customisable! If you insist in imposing your aestetics or whatever ideas you have about 'changing our lives' on us, Firefox becomes like any other browser and LOSES its interest! 

Think about that.

xA_Ax
Making moves

I love this new redesign

Hmm... third "I love this" comment I've seen in the past hour.

I wonder if someone has linked this discussion post on Reddit and said "anyone who likes it, get over there and post that you like it" 🤔.  Not sure that action will change much though: 👍🏻 9 to 💬 527 currently on this post, which is what the kids like to call "getting totally ratioed" 😂

Eleonorrai
Making moves

I truly love the new look!😍

Is this a Firefox staff-member posting from their personal account? 😜

Es curioso, porque es una cuenta nueva. Muchos de los aquí presentes creando sus cuentas porque les molestaba el nuevo diseño. A "ella", vino porque le gusta. Eso tiene menos explicación y más sospecha de que "alguien" intenta inflar el apoyo de forma artificial.

La gente quiere un navegador funcional neutro y con la capacidad de personalizarlo. No que impongan un diseño desalineado con los gustos personales de la mayoría de sus usuario.

---

It's curious, considering it's a new account. Most people here created their accounts because the new design annoyed them. "She", on the other hand, came here because she likes it. That has less of an explanation and more of a suspicion that "someone" is trying to artificially inflate support.

People want a functional, neutral browser with the ability to customize it. Not an imposed design that is completely out of touch with the personal tastes of the majority of its users.

jonblazeson
Making moves

This is the worst UI update I've ever seen. You went from a thoughtfully crafted and near perfect UI, to a "hey, I think this is fun" piece of garbage. Seriously terrible! It's so bad that when you remove the configuration to disable it, I will leave 20+ years of Firefox configs, accounts, and usage.

Two longer-term options:
1. Firefox business version: https://tips.navas.us/2026/10/firefox-ui-debacle.html 
2. Firefox "forks", such as: Basilisk • Floorp • Librewolf • Pale Moon • Waterfox

User-82849
Making moves

Dear Mozilla team, I can only suggest as a user, that:
1. Give people possibilities to customise the design - and each user to fit their own needs -
By that I example: A slider to chose the border-radius of nova design - from 0px to cap. at 100px; and  a switch button - between "px" and "%", to chose the INT number system for the roundness input.
- That way users will unable to dislike any change - if they can fit themselves.

2. Your new pilled/fully circled version of buttons - does not fit everywhere - some elements seems weird to look at, like so: popup elements f.e. "Extensions" - have too curved edges - it does not fit well with the hovered button at highest or lowest inside it.
Each element should have its own designated style to calc() the curve of element.
You cannot just slap the same static border-radius to every element - you have to at least make a system for it.

3. In French version of settings - the text changing to bold (active tab of settings list) - breaks text to next line - literally moving everything, that exists on screen - some type of styling should be definitely computed here, in order to prevent text breaking on action. You can use HTML tag <pre></pre> - then even by changing text to bold - its size should not change.

4. Additional (different topic than Nova) - could we get ability to move the main input/address bar?
And would that be possible for you to make the window buttons (close, minimise etc.) to be contained as element - movable in toolbar editor, as well?

Thank you for your most needed work.

TnF
Making moves

COMPLETE TRASH. IF NOTHING IS BROKEN, THERE IS NOTHING TO FIX. RETARDED DEVS STOP COPYING APPLE MOTHER**bleep**ERS. WHOEVER APPROVED THIS NEEDS TO GET CANCER ASAP. 

rw335i
Making moves

It looks like you are trying to optimize Firefox for the cell phone model. But it makes it a garbage mess for PC users. I suspect there are more PC users than cell users, and some may be using it for business purposes. Do you really want to alienate and potentially lose all those people?