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 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]

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]

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.

[e674h12v3a]

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]

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.

[J35VKRYZPO]

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.

[Its-a-me]

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]

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?

[YvannaIrie]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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!!!

[AnonymousGoblin]

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.

[Cheek]

Aha, this fixed it - thanks!

[Justaminute]

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]

I love this new redesign

[dftf]

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]

I truly love the new look!😍

[dftf]

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

[J35VKRYZPO]

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]

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.

[User-82849]

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]

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]

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?

[user38438575]

This is the worst update ever I finished making this account to tell you this. I HATE IT. I HATE IT. I can repeat that over and over and over again is how much i hate it. i fixed it with about:config for now but its like holy **bleep** what is going on is there too much free time over there dont know what else to do? need to justify hiring everyone? like whats going on why make **bleep** worse? absolutely pointless update pushed by absolutely pointless employees I really might switch browsers over this and thats insane ive preferred firefox my whole life

[bwolf384]

Nope, nope, nope, nope, NOPE. Smaller rounded tabs look terrible and are an insulting waste of space. Changes like this cannot possibly have been supported by good-faith human UX testing. I appreciate the time and effort that developers must have put into the project, but PLEASE put your pride aside on this one and read the room!

[Moe2]

I hope you add an option to get rid of the rounded tabs. The spacing is of, and it doesn't fit to the overall style of my OS. PLEASE MAKE IT AN OPTION!!!

[Rajan_404]

This has got to be on of, if not THE WORST UI changes ever, NO ONE asked for more rounded corners or moving the search box up for Widgets. I made this account just to say how awful this looks.

[discopunkt]

What are you waiting, make UI Design back !!!

[HoratioFellatio]

This is my first time interacting with this community, I created an account just to post: This UI redesign is atrocious, it's so ugly.

• So much wasted space
• Why is everything rounded?
• Why are there gradients? what is this, 2004?

I have disabled nova immediately, I will continue to never use nova again.

[MotoMoto]

A mí me encanta el diseño Nova. De hecho, me costó menos acostumbrarme a él que al diseño Proton. Lo único que no me gustaron fueron los gradientes de color, ya que me parecieron demasiado vistosos y terminaron distrayéndome. Por suerte, pude solucionar esto gracias a que Mozilla mantiene el tema Proton como extensión. Sin embargo, me gustaría que el tema Proton estuviese disponible como opción en Firefox, ya que entiendo que a otras personas sí pueden gustarles los colores gradientes de Nova.

[newredesigsucks]

new design sucks so bad that i created new account on just to **bleep** post.

[kutukvpavel]

I just got my tabs rounded with a ridiculous corner radius! You may call excessive rounding "a clearer interface", but I call it nonsense.

Please, STOP CHANGING MY UI EVERY YEAR! It's unnecessary, it's annoying and it breaks my muscle memory. And I get really, really pissed off when someone breaks my muscle memory.

Oh, and also... STOP ROUNDING EVERY CORNER! My screen is not your designer's free real estate.

For now I'll use about:config to revert this nonsensical nova theme. BUT. If you decide to continue to push rounded corners on me, then bye-bye, I'm switching browsers.

[Menaan]

How did such a terrible change make it all the way to production?

This has got to be one of the worse UI changes I've seen since Windows 8 start menu.

This seriously needs to be an optional thing to enable, at least on updates. Turning it off definitely should not be buried in an about:config, it should be a prominent option in settings.

I'm sorry to whoever spent time on this and actually thought this was a good looking change. But you really need to better understand your user base and design the UI to fit it's usage and not simply trying to make a big change for the sake of change.

Firefox is officially no longer my primary browser now. Even though I can disable this, this just makes too many times in recent updates that very poor decisions have been made like this. I can no longer rely on firefox be a simple, straightforward, and good browser.

[BruceLeeroy]

What the heck is going on?? Why was I forced into this repulsively ugly gui? I just searched settings, and I cannot find any option to revert to the original. I know Firefox has been slowly going downhill; but now it seems they've officially taken the plunge into "F*** all of you, we're treating you like children" territory. I don't get it. And why can't I turn off updates? I don't want to "download but not install." I don't want to auto-update. I just want a stable system that works well without jumping through a ton of hoops or becoming a tech support specialist to modify the system. We haven't had that with Firefox for a good 5-7 years now.

Yesterday I spent FIVE HOURS with MS tech support because their forced Windows update broke my system, and they could fix nothing. They are totally useless. I've grown to expect that kind of thing from MS; we know that they have a seeming disdain for their actual users. But Firefox too? This is depressing.

And yes, I know that this is partially subjective, but it's an objective fact that a gray-orange-red gradient background is more distracting than a solid color background. And a brightly colored gradient circle outlining the title is more distracting that just a regular tab. AND there's no longer anything geometrically connecting the circle to the tab I'm on, so it's actually harder to tell what tab I'm using at a glance. I rarely have fewer than 20 tabs open, so now there's often no way at all for me to know what tab I'm on unless I scroll and search. AND the stupid circle hides text in the title, which makes it harder to read.

The only good news I can think of is that this forced me to get a Mozilla account so I can complain. It's my first time on a forum yay!

If someone can point me to a setting that I can uncheck to restore a GUI that actually makes sense, I'll eat my words, offer a formal apology, and commit Seppuku.

[BruceLeeroy]

Thanks for this info to disable the barbie-land update: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/the-new-firefox-design-lands-in-today-this-is-what-you-ca... 

Now I can die happy. Goodbye cruel world 🙂

[dftf]

To uninstall a recent Windows update:
In the Start Menu search for Control Panel, and open it
Click "Programs and Features" or "Uninstall a program"
Click "View installed updates"
Scroll down to the "Microsoft Windows" blue header line section
From there, click the most-recent update and look for "Uninstall" on the toolbar

You can also try to repair Windows.  Search for Command Prompt in the Start Menu,
right-click it and choose "Run as administrator" and then type
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
then press ENTER.  When that finishes, type
SFC /SCANNOW
then press ENTER.

If either report they found issues, but couldn't fix them, restart your PC, then run
both commands again.  Repeat until both say there are no issues found.