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.

[JNavas]

> just rollback and try better again.

Or at least make it a Settings option indefinitely.

[JackNotParrot]

Hi everyone!

I have been using Firefox since 2005, it's my main browser all the time and I'm a big fan of it. What I think about new Firefox 157 UI design if anyone cares? It's awful. Not only does it look really bad (which it does), but it also hurts UX: thin tabs, big spaces, big paddings, etc... wastes screen space.

I find the redesigned UI less comfortable and less practical than the previous version. Instead of improving my daily browsing experience, it forces me to adapt to visual changes that I neither requested nor find beneficial.

browser.nova.enabled=false works fine for me now, but I'm not sure how long this will last

Please keep classic Firefox interface as officially supported option for your users.

[cadwellm]

Unfortunately, I've read the option to change Nova in about:config is supposed to be removed around November 24th of this year.

[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

[JackNotParrot]

Firefox ESR is a good option, but anyway it's support time is limited. So, I think another decent alternative is a classic Theme (if it's made from original css-s we can keep now, it should be good enough). 

But anyways I think, that denying users the freedom to choose goes against the Firefox philosophy.

[JNavas]

An ESR release gets a year of updates, but that's not necessarily the end of the ESR trail, because we don't know how good or bad a future ESR version will be.

ESR has the further benefit of being more stable than the standard release, which is being compromised by rapid updates.

We are still free to choose, standard or ESR, or another browser entirely.

[cadwellm]

That's why I went to Waterfox. Set it up using my Firefox profile so it is exactly the same as my Firefox was before the abysmal update they call 'Nova'.

It's Nova alright...made my brain explode as soon as I saw the changes.

[KrownProductsLt]

Sound is borked in 157 for Linux Mint. Volume levels are too low on all videos. Had to install 'Sound Adjuster' plug-in and set db gain to 3x to get audio levels restored. Not an issue with Vol Control, headsets, muting, external speakers, recent Linux updates or anything else hardware related. This is only happening with Firefox 157.0.1 from the pushed update. Reviewed the audio settings in About:config but could locate an issue.

Please fix this problem.

[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

[sosasees]

 With how Mozilla is clearly disreguarding User Feedback now, we need Helium and Ladybird to save our Web Browsing Experience.

[JNavas]

Version 153.5.0, first offered to ESR channel users on October 13, 2026
I confirm this update retains the classic Proton UI. 👍👍

[noonespecial1]

change it back

[leojth]

Mozilla, if you think "they will get used to it", I can tell you that I never liked or got used to the detached tab buttons, but I could tolerate it. This new design, I can not tolerate.

When new design comes, I usually try to use it for a while, but this I had to revert immediately. Active "tab" looks like a text box, not a tab. (if it actually was a text box it would be rather cool). Together with adress bar it looks like two misaligned text boxes (dark mode, horizontal tabs).

My opinion is that at least the active tab should look like a tab and not something else.

[Makoto]

There seem to be many critical voices, but I personally think the new design is better than the previous one.
However, the tab design for "Container Tabs" doesn't appear to have been updated to match the new look, so I would like to see that addressed.

[dftf]

> "... I personally think the new design is better than the previous one"

You appear to use macOS, so obviously the new design fits in the best on that system.

It looks odd though on Windows and most Linux distros that don't try to mimic the macOS look (e.g. elementaryOS).  So glad you like, and enjoy, but they should allow others to reverse the look easily.

[nordo]

This new theme/look is horrible. I can't stand how it looks. Stop forcing this garbage on us.