Updates to Android Navigation

[andyf]

Exciting changes are coming to Android: a new navigation bar designed to make your browsing experience faster and more intuitive. We have streamlined the navigation with back and forward arrows right on the toolbar so that you can move between pages effortlessly. Plus, the new toolbar and address bar will disappear when you scroll, giving you more screen space to enjoy your favorite content.

Here are some of the new features and improvements:

• One-Tap New Tab: Start a different task in a new tab without disrupting your current tab.
  
  
• Back and Forward Arrows on Toolbar: Navigate between pages without opening the menu. You also have quicker access to the tab’s history by long-pressing the arrows. 
  
  
• Auto-Hide Toolbar and Address Bar: Gain more screen space when you scroll. You can disable the auto-hide in Settings under Customize.
  
  
• Faster sharing: The share button is now at your fingertips instead of buried in the menu.
  
  
• Enhanced Accessibility: Buttons are easier to tap, meeting WCAG AA standards for mobile devices.

This redesign is not just about aesthetics — it’s about making sure everyone can use Firefox with ease. We've gone through rigorous accessibility reviews to ensure our features are easy to use for everyone, including those with special accessibility needs. 

Our aim is to make your browsing experience smoother, faster, more accessible, and more enjoyable. This enhanced toolbar and navigation paves the way for upcoming improvements to the Firefox menu. Get ready for a Firefox that’s built for the future! More enhancements to come. 

Please note that this feature is already available in Firefox Android Nightly 130 and it is still in development. We encourage you to try the feature and if you encounter any bugs or issues, we would love to hear from you. You can report bugs here.

[Sahbi]

The "new tab opened" popup thing overlaps with the entire navigation bar, which is quite annoying if you open multiple tabs in succession and after the last one you want to switch to one of the earlier tabs. I also don't like having the bar on the bottom and it looks like redundant buttons were added simply to justify even creating a new bar. Or a share button that's always obscuring the URL but you don't really need to use it that often to begin with? You can always long-press the URL > "Copy", pretty simple and not really any slower.

In general: not a very well thought out design.

[dlauri65]

I really hate the new navigation bar, and I dislike that it is at the bottom. I was able to find instructions for enabling debug mode and going to secret settings to disable the navigation bar, but I really hope that you will make it easier to and continue to allow us to disable it completely.

[iPollito]

Tengo instalada la versión más actual 128.0.2 en un Moto G20 con  Android 11  

Desde que actualice a versiones anteriores, no he podido salir de ese error de pantalla completa. Es bastante frustrante la verdad, antes Firefox era el mejor para mí en cuanto a ver videos por su bloqueador de anuncios en Android y sigue siendolo pero ya no tanto 

Porque por más actualizaciones que recibo el error de pantalla completa, no se va se sigue viendo una pestaña de navegación en la parte lateral, sucede en cualquier página web donde aya videos para ver en pantalla completa 

I have the most recent version 128.0.2 installed on a Moto G20 with Android 11 Since I updated to previous versions, I have not been able to get out of that full screen error. It is quite frustrating to be honest, before Firefox was the best for me when it comes to watching videos because of its ad blocker on Android and it still is but not so much anymore Because no matter how many updates I receive, the full screen error does not go away, you still see a navigation tab on the side, it happens on any web page where there are videos to watch in full screen

[jomatom]

I like the new bottom sheet. I only wish, that

• I could swipe it up instead of having to click the three-dots (maybe make that an option in settings)
• it has one more anchor point that is about a third of the screen (so near the bottom)

[Synchro]

Just realized that even now we can open new tab by tapping on "home" button and in new interface this button just changes its form to "+". So we get the second bar only for "forward arrow" icon...

[Jaoh]

As repeated numerous times in this page: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/firefox-mobile-toolbar-redesign-needs-a-compact-mode/td-p...

People think it's a bad idea, myself included. I don't use either the foward or backbuttons, I just use Androids back gesture, I don't use the share button, I don't use the refresh button, I prefer using the pull to refresh, and It uses up too much space.

This update is the exact opposite of what I want in an update, I hated the update that added the homepage button to the left of the url bar, there was no option to remove that (The only good part of this new update is that it removes the homepage button from the urlbar.) and I never use reader mode which also doesn't have an option to be removed from the urlbar.

If you procede with this please add an option to disable it.

Also it doesn't look good when using the bottom urlbar mode, which I use exclusively.

 

[TheFeelSage]

I started a discussion a few weeks ago that has a lot of feedback regarding this change:

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/firefox-mobile-toolbar-redesign-needs-a-compact-mode/m-p/...

[wutongtaiwan]

I'd love to know how many people need to use the share button, generally speaking, sharing is to directly long press the URL and then copy the URL, is it necessary to add a share button? In addition, I hope Mozilla can take a look at the lemur browser, I don't know if you have heard of this browser, this browser is a mobile browser that can use extensions, similar to kiwi browser, but lemur is more in line with the usage habits and aesthetics of Chinese, I like lemur's homepage, very simple. If you can, check out Lemur's homepage

[Ponda]

Okay, interesting, but…

• One-tap new tab functionality was already achieved by home button (which was terrible design on its own, since home button is supposed to open home page and not new tab, so a plus overall).
• Forward and back buttons – I'd prefer this as gestures, in fact Android already implements left to right swipe as back action… except enabling this also enables right to left as also back, which makes no sense. But since there are two bars now, address bar could still be used to switch between tabs with swipes while swiping on the new one could move back and forward.
• If swiping gestures for back/forward were to be implemented, buttons would become redundant for some users. Customization of navigation bar, including ability to remove arrows and place other buttons or extensions shortcuts, would prove highly valuable in such scenario.
• Can we have both bars on the bottom or top? I hope so.
• We have auto-hiding bar already and it's good, though sometimes it can be a little hard to bring the bar back.
• Overall, I'm not sure whether new bar is entirely needed and whether it helps or clutters likely depends on the user. I'm not convinced which one is it for me, I would have to try it on my own.

[SanguinePar]

Very ugly new design.

My preferred setup is URL bar at the bottom and auto hiding. If I need to go back, I use build in Android back gestures.

If I need to go forward (very rare) I can do that behind the 3 dot menu.

Existing setup already lets me view all my tabs, using button on same row as URL.

This new approach looks bad, blocks content and adds virtually nothing.

Thank goodness there's a way to revert it in Secret Settings. I hope that option remains (or better, that this change is abandoned altogether).

[rkkn]

Add a manual hide for the toolbar. Auto hide does not always work or is not always applicable. Sometimes a website does not scroll or does not scroll in the standard way. For instance, on a website I use for reading novels, it does not scroll vertically while reading (swipe sideways to flip pages), so the toolbar is permanently there taking up space and making the page smaller.

Also add an option to disable the toolbar entirely. I almost never need the buttons, so I would prefer to not have it.

[Yurgenst]

The new bar that is split to the bottom covers the find in page bar. I can't search pages anymore. Please, please give me a way to disable this terrible new bar.

[Yurgenst]

I found the solution. As of 131.0a1 you can enable the developer menu by tapping the Firefox logo in the about screen. Then under the new secret settings menu, uncheck enable navigation toolbar. This should be off by default until it doesn't interfere with other UI elements in my opinion.

[intrnl]

I have "scroll to hide toolbar" disabled. I didn't mind that the toolbar permanently takes up space, but with the new UI it's pretty much not worth it to have it disabled. I'm forced to enable this again just to get precious space back, in a device form factor that's already constrained with screen space.

[uz]

Hey @andyf this thread has lots of passionate, thoughtful, well-reasoned feedback.  Do you have any response, or are we just shouting into a void?

[Jaoh]

I am not sure if it's unrelated to this update, but pull to refresh has stopped working on forum sites using Xenforo since this update came out, It works fine on other sites though. It used to work fine before this update.

[antny]

Are there any plans to improve Firefox navigation via mouse on Android? At the moment, it lags behind Chromium-based browsers. For example, in terms of right-click support/copying text/touch and hold simulation. I understand that some people probably don't care about mouse support on Android. Still, at the moment, it's hard to use Firefox on a large Android tablet, which detracts from using Firefox as a daily driver across all platforms (regardless of personal views on Android tablets, they are becoming more prevalent).

[nightuser]

Personally, I'm waiting for this feature to appear in stable. I prefer to use gestures to show the recent apps, but don't really like the gesture for theback button.

[seseiSeki]

Like many others already stated: I too am not a fan of how buttons that don't get used very often now are taking up a lot of screen space.

But aside from that, interacting with the buttons on the new toolbar is a bit odd. One point brought up was "Enhanced Accessibility: Buttons are easier to tap", which, frankly, I don't see at all. The zone that triggers a button's action got shrunken down to basically just the icon itself. Being even a little bit off causes nothing to happen, since there's no leeway at all:

The same problem was already implemented in the tab list a while ago. The close button's trigger zone is now just the icon itself, demanding unnecessary precision from the user to even execute basic browser functions. Sure, it's not the end of the world if you don't hit an icon and you have to do a double take, but how does this make buttons easier to tap?

I also noticed that it is no longer possible to swipe away the toast notifications that pop up when closing tabs. Before leaving Firefox, I usually close the tab I just looked at. When opening Firefox again, I'm now always greeted with "Tab closed  UNDO". Why is it no longer possible to just remove that message without having to wait for it to time out?

[seseiSeki]

Wait a second, missing the icon doesn't do nothing, it counts as tapping the website. And if, by chance there's a link, or even more likely, a button that spans the whole width, you just tap whatever is under the new toolbar:

 

[ffffff]

Wow, nice catch! Just tested on my device and got the same behavior.

[apandya]

Nice catch!

[GongoozleSauce]

Hi thanks for posting this.

Here's my two cents...

1. Will long-pressing on the newtab button allow you to open an incognito tab?

2. Can we have the option to choose which buttons to set? I say this because Android's default back gesture/function works well enough to go back to the previous page

3. Maybe we can have a bookmark button and/or extension button instead of the forward button. (As Firefox Android supports more and more addons, the extensions section will only be used more frequently)

4. Will this view support custom themes? Themes that we can be downloaded from the addons store?

Thanks.

[ZephyrFox]

Registered just to add my voice to the chorus. This is taking up a lot of screen space, is distracting, clunky, and redundant.

The option to disable shouldn't be hidden in a secret menu. It should be in the regular options.

I don't see why the new style should be default. Provide a splash tab or something when you get the new version that shows you the new style and how to enable it if you want to use it.

Beyond that, you really should just be able to have options for each bar. Show at top or bottom, autohide, compact mode.

[AmericanLoco]

Can we please stop waging war on vertical screen real estate? First you started taking up tons of vertical space for the UI on the desktop, now we're doing the same on mobile.

Please stop.

[jguiii]

Why does this need to take up so much space? None of these features are particularly useful, auto hide toolbar is already feature that his been in FF mobile for years, the back button features are emulated by thrbsystem back button geature, most people share the URL directly by copy and pasting it, and having to press 2 buttons to open a new tab is not the end of the world for me. Most websites will automatically open a new tab if I need one.

Having tried this on my S24 Ultra and Pixel 6a, I have two overall concerns. One is the obvious waste of vertical space that this uses, which is both a visual and functional annoyance, especially on devices with a smaller screen, and my second issue is that it's starting to deviate too much from what a user would expect to see from a mobile Web browser. If you consider other Android browsers, like Chrome, who's UI is almost identical to the current Firefox UI, I don't see any need to change it.

Chrome

Firefox Stable

 

[donaldslack]

Great to see the focus on accessibility! WCAG compliance is a big win. Will the auto-hide function be customizable for users who prefer a permanent toolbar?

[Jaoh]

The hide functionality has existed in Firefox Mobile since I have first used it, which IIRC I started using it in around 2019-2020. In Settings > Customize you have a toggle called "scroll to hide toolbar" enabling it makes it hide the bar, disabling it makes it fixed.

[Denir]

The back button is redundant in android, because it is always there from the system whether using gestures or 3 button configuration. Please change it, use it for something else. Don't be hung up on this design please. Maybe shields icon there would be useful? Also, please have an option to use the older bar style. A lot of people are not gonna like this design.

[Icerow]

Plus add option to remove this thing is useless and ugly, what year is it 2010?

[ivanrst]

Please leave the option to disable all this and continue to use the old interface.

[KaBoS]

Finally this is the only thing that was making me stick to another not good browser as my main browser In android

I just hope the arrow icons look better to be like this 

Also add an option for the user to put shortcut here,

for example bookmark or Home Page 

It would be great to allow the user to customize what they need.

[TerletPaper]

This new navigation bar does nothing good but putting two buttons one tap closer, one of which should be a hold action on the navigation bar, and one of which is still barely more convenient than holding down the device's back button, with the downsides of less screen space when the navigation bar is visible (and because the navigation bar was already hidden when scrolled, this isn't a change to the screen space when it isn't) and the inherent inconvenience of UI change.

Those of us who want browser controls at the bottom of the screen have already selected the option that moves them to the bottom of the screen; Do not ignore user preferences.

[DonutRush]

This is a bad feature that should never make it to the main branch. It fills a huge amount of space, even on giant phones, to create buttons that duplicate behavior that either Firefox or Android already handles. It's completely pointless.

[hhorizzon]

I really liked the new design.  I don't understand dissatisfied users. 

I think that the new design will definitely not deter those who want to switch to Firefox from Chrome.

[KaBoS]

Hi After the last update navigation Back to the old, I thought that an option was added in the settings to choose between the old and new navigation look, but I didn't find anything.

 

 

[kensand]

Please, please, please make the new navigation bar optional. At a minumum, keep the secret setting for it. The bar takes up double the real-estate and has no useful functionality for me; I prefer to just use the menu button for the relatively infrequent tkmes I need to reload or move forward. The back button on Android already works to navigate back.

For those who, like me, came here looking for instructions on how to disable the new navigation bar, you need to enable secret settings (Settings -> About Firefox -> Tap the firefox logo a bunch of times) and then there will be a toggle under Settings -> Secret Settings -> Enable Navigation Toolbar

[emvaized]

I like the new design. It's great to finally see some UI refreshments in Firefox Android, which it definetely needed.

I also tested the new menu layout, option for which is available under "Secret settings", and I loved it as well 👍 Although I feel like some options, like "Reader mode" and "Translate page" should be available at level 0.

With all these UI refreshements, will be great to see some improvements for the tab list as well. For example, showing favicons in the "list" tab layout, which I've been waiting for a long time.

[SilentObserver]

I have a Pixel 7 with Android 14 (waiting on the Android 15 upgrade), and this *still* doesn't work.  I can swipe from the left edge and get a disappearing button with a left arrow, but it appears to switch between tabs, not back up to the previous page (as all desktop browsers have done since Netscape Navigator in the early 1990s).  I've seen suggestions to swipe down and use the three dots menu, but mine at least doesn't have a "previous page" option.  I've explored the Firefox settings and the Toolbar shortcut doesn't offer this, either.

How can I return to the previous page after following a link?

[Jaoh]

 Do you not have this button in the 3 dot menu?