Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly!

[AshleyT]

Hi there! I'm Ashley, Senior Staff Product Manager for Firefox. After months of updates on Project Nova, it's finally in Nightly, ready for you to see for yourself. We're modernizing Firefox from the ground up to ensure it remains a fast, secure, and highly customizable companion for today’s internet.

This is still early days, so you'll notice some rough edges — a few things may look unfinished or inconsistent for now. Keep your Nightly up to date to see the latest. 

As a reminder, the Project Nova updates include:

• Simpler navigation and a redesigned Settings experience, now live in release
• Refreshed tabs, icons, spacing, and browser surfaces
• More ways to make it yours, with rich new themes, wallpapers, and personalization options that let Firefox match your style.

We're grateful for all the thoughtful feedback we got on our earlier Connect post, on social media, and through user research. Based on what we heard, we've made some changes:

• We'll be experimenting with corner roundness settings for tabs to give you more options — coming soon in Firefox Labs.
• We brought back Compact Mode so there’s more space for web content and tabs
• We added more neutral standard theme options.

You can learn more in our blog post.

See it first in Nightly

Nightly is where this work takes shape in the open, and we wanted you to be among the first to see where it's headed. Since much of what’s changed so far focuses on the look of the interface, keep an eye out for how these layouts feel during your day-to-day browsing. We're aiming for a clean, intuitive experience —so please look out for anything that feels off, like icons, spacing, alignment, or how things hold up across themes, window sizes, different languages, screen readers, and keyboard navigation. If something catches your eye, we'd love to hear about it.

Download the latest version of Nightly to see what's new.

Something's not right? File a bug.

If you find visual or functional issues with the Nova style changes in Nightly, please follow these steps:

1. Click this link to file a Bugzilla issue. We're asking everyone to file bugs this way, so we can easily keep track of all issues reported.
2. In the bug, please add steps to reproduce the issue, and if possible screenshots or screencasts. Please don't add severity and priority to the bugs — our triaging teams will handle that.
3. You can see all Nova testing bugs filed here.

Have overall feedback? Let us know here in Connect.

Drop a comment here to let us know your thoughts and suggestions. Thanks for being part of this.

[akayanni]

YUCK I don't need pill like corners. Whoever thought that looked good or was worth the time spent. I do need a common save dialogue for applications so everything isn't dumped in Downloads. Chromium can manage that.

[breakingspell]

Sorry, meant to reply to the thread, not your post 🙂 

[Zig]

Tottaly agree! The slight rounded corners we had before were much nicer.

[s_hentzschel]

Well, nobody "needs" a specific border-radius. It's a design decision and some prefer less rounding while others prefer more rounding. This is something that it easy to change with userChrome.css.

[lackey]

If you think modifying CSS files is "easy" for the average person, you are out of touch. 

[s_hentzschel]

That's not the point. The point is that no matter what kind of rounding Mozilla decides on, someone will always be unhappy with it. There’s no objective reason to say that less rounding would be better—you either like it or you don’t. And if it’s important to you, it's easy to change.

Mozilla has a large community that's ready to help anyone who just asks. I know this because I run a Firefox platform myself that does this kind of thing for other users every day. There, too, users with absolutely no prior knowledge sign up every day, and in the end, pretty much everyone got what they wanted. It's only a matter of asking and copy & paste.

And to be fair: Most people don't care about such design details at all. But the people who care can change almost everything because Firefox is the most customizable browser on the market. There it pays off that the Firefox front end is based on web technologies that today's people already learn in school at a young age. You can't do the same things in Chromium based browsers.

[wellington1993]

Maybe a new radius adjustment on browser preferences ou theme could help.
 

[CS2]

it really should be "easier" to do that then, it currently takes a bit out of your way, requires updating if the ui changes, and in general would be a lot nicer if they just added more customization support (or even, readd full theming)

[Alfakennyone]

Turn it off here:

about:config

browser.nova.enabled = false

[MammothJerk]

thank you

[radxxx]

Thank you so much. 

[Lex_Xiama]

Thanks mate, youre best

[RaptorZX4_1]

wonderful! thank you!

[bmcdev]

Much better. Thank you.

[F3TTST3R]

Thank you, this was what I wanted. This change was overriding my theme, nevermind the hideous pill rounding. 

[mptyler]

Good idea for now, but will it always be a good choice.  There may be other good updates besides ui that become unavailable.  I prefer the idea expressed elsewhere of several choices that may be selected.

[breakingspell]

The outer window padding/border MUST go! It is only appropriate in Mac OS, and only while a floating window, never while tiled, maximized, or full-screen. 

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2038022 

[s_hentzschel]

I's obvious that you didn't test Nova with a nightly build if you think the outer border appears in full-screen mode. That was an unfinished state and has long since been fixed.

And for the record, I couldn't disagree more that it should be removed in maximized mode. For me, it makes no sense at all to remove the main characteristic of the design in maximized mode. It should not look different than the non-maximized mode.

[breakingspell]

You are correct, I have not tested Nova in today's Nightly. I will never drive Nova until that border is dealt with. I'm following the relevant Bugzilla reports like a hawk, full-screen state is "fixed" but not any other window state yet.

Here's some context you should know. Roughly a year ago the ability to interact with top tabs in maximized and tiled windows under KDE Plasma was broken, and I stepped forward to ensure it was fixed. The left-hand behavior is correct, right-hand is where the break was. 

The outer Nova border destroys this behavior and goes back to the right-hand example here. Even if the border is interactive, I would remove it in CSS as I value edge-to-edge tiled windows. 

[breakingspell]

I've now tested the latest nightly, we still have no top/edge interactivity when the border is reduced in Compact Mode. This has been relayed to the relevant Bugzilla report. 

Wrist strain occurs when required to precisely aim below the screen's top edge, in order to select a tab hundreds of times throughout a day.

[Bluxar]

That's what I came to comment

[dedmen]

Today is the first time I see Nova, in Firefox Nightly. On two PC's. 

And I have a 5 pixel gap on the top, bottom, left and right of my maximised browser window.
I also have it while windowed, which is also weird. If I could at least use it to drag/resize the window, but I can't. I can click on the left/right/bottom borders and it does nothing. I don't see the purpose, and it doesn't even look nicer.

Thanks for showing me that the inside area has rounded corners... right next to the non-rounded corner of the actual window border on Windows.

Oh and thanks for rounded context menus, who's contents are still square and the hover highlight boxes are also square.

I do however like the look of the rounded address and search bar. It goes well with the mostly round-y icons on the inner ends of them.

[0xMatthias]

I still got the outer boarder on a current build in Nightly and I honestly can't see any good reason for this waste of space. [Maximized view, Windows, 155.0a1 (2026-07-28) (64-bit)]

To the same extend, I don't understand the gap between the url bar and the content area - it's just wasting space on my screen.

Using a different argument: All those gaps are a hindrance for accessibility in my opinion, because people, who can't navigate their mouse cursor precisely now have to exactly hit the scrollbar or "X" in the top right corner, whereas without the gap, they can just over-steer and hit it anyway.

[RaptorZX4_1]

i really hate this new look. Plus i hate the "contour" thing that shows the background image all around the browser field.

really hate it!

[Kvin]

Hi, I have some important questions regarding the design and interface

1. Will it be possible to customize the rounding not only for tabs, but also for buttons, the search bar, context menus, etc.? Otherwise, I’ll have to use CSS styles for medium rounding. I don’t like the new, extreme rounding on tabs, buttons, the search bar, etc. For example, the Vivaldi browser lets you choose and customize the rounding. Please, this is very important.

2. Are there plans to implement a blur effect across the entire browser? For example, like in Zen and Arc, it looks great, and I’ve heard from various people that they want Firefox to have a blur effect across the entire interface.

3. Will there be a new browser icon? The Firefox icon hasn’t changed since 2019, and besides, the icons for channels like ESR, Stable, and Beta are all the same.

4. Will the add-ons page get a new interface design? I’d really like to see add-ons displayed in columns or a grid on the page so there’s less scrolling, and I’d also like a new design for the history and bookmarks pages, etc.

5. Will the icons be brought back to the menu and added to the context menus? It’s a shame that the icons still haven’t been restored(

6. Is there a plan to redesign the Extension Store’s layout and interface? It would be great if the first comments were displayed without having to open the comments section, if there were a column showing similar extensions, if video demos for extensions were supported, and if there were no confirmation prompts when installing extensions.

Thank you very much for your answers🙏

[jwolf]

hi Kvin, great questions. I don't know the answers to all of them but I wanted to answer what I could. Anything I can't I've left blank.  

2. We're looking at Mica and supporting more mac translucency. We want to do this thoughtfully once we launch Nova so this is being investigated as something we support. 

3. We recently did a redesign and brought a new Firefox Mascot (Kit!) forward. However, we are NOT updating our icon at the time. On mobile you can switch out your app icon and we have some fun options. 

4&6. This is great feedback. I've passed it on to the designer in this space. 

[kwiatek]

First of all, thank you for bringing back Compact mode.

Secondly, please stop this madness with rounding everything. Each UI re-disgn just introduces even more rounded corners which occupy too much space.

[RaptorZX4_1]

if they really want to keep the rounded things, this should stay ONLY ON PHONES. I'm on a computer typing this right now, i hate rounded corners. Plus this border they made around the browser is just plain stupid, i really hope they remove that!

[GamingX42]

I really got used to being able to move my mouse to the very top of my monitor to click on a tab, or the very corners to get to the first tab or to close the window - that is not possible anymore and its because of the insanely unnecessary tiny border around the entire window - so stop that and all the other added rounding, it just looks like chrome in a bad way.

Even apple understood with iOS 27 that adding back straight lines where they make sense is good UI design.

[dedmen]

This is also the thing that hit me.

My first thought was "well it doesn't look too bad, I don't notice much change"

But when I tried to go to my default tab, with my standard gesture of just clicking in the corner, and it didn't work.. That made me go "oh.."
And then I noticed all the rounded tabs, that make me feel like I'm not hitting it because I'm not hitting the center part.

I generally move my mouse just up (doesn't matter how far up, just hit the top edge of the browser), and then click to switch tabs. That doesn't work anymore either!

I now have to actually aim precisely onto the tab, which is just so annoying. This even made me make a mozilla account just so I can can complain about it..

As someone with 3 browser windows and hundreds of open tabs, not being able to switch tabs is a bit infuriating.

The compact mode is nice, but.. it still leaves a 1 pixel gap around everything, meaning I still cannot click on things. WHY??

[Ronifue]

This "new design" really isn't well thought out, and why can't you just improve upon your original clean, square UI design? I'm not against rounded corners, but if you're going to adopt them as a new design approach, you might as well learn from how Vivaldi does it. Their rounded corner design is elegant and beautiful, with smooth interactive animations that seamlessly integrate with the browser. In contrast, your new design manages to make even a combination of rounded corners look disharmonious. Why are some elements square while others are round? And I'd like to know, why is there a thin dividing line between my browser page and the toolbar? This meaningless separation is a complete waste of my screen's usable space.😢

[timidbit]

Wow, it's so awful, I can't even describe!

Why would I need unclickable space around tabs and functional buttons?!! What genius invented that?!!

I use Firefox on Windows in maximized mode. Now I can't even click on tabs and minimize/maximize/close buttons at the edges of the screen! How convenient!

Why is everyone obsessed with super rounded corners? It's so ugly and inconvenient.

The last design with slightly rounded tabs was the best. I liked it as soon as it was introduced.

How can I return rectangular tabs?

UPDATE: And the gradient on the tabbar is very distracting. And it's hard to find tabs with my eyes. I would prefer a solid color (as in current default theme). And if a user wants a gradient or transparency or whatever, they can use one of the themes in https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/themes/.

[dedmen]

To be fair (and extremely generous), not being able to accidentally hit the close button by going into the corner, I actually like.

I NEVER want to hit the close button, doing that means my browser will freeze for 20 seconds closing the window, then I need to go to recently closed windows to reopen it, and the browser will freeze for 5!!! minutes, until it manages to reopen that window and I can continue doing what I've been doing.

But tbh, THIS small quality of life improvement, is not worth the cost of all the rest that comes with it.

[Jon]

Also want to highlight that @AshleyT will be joining this week's community call to chat more about Project Nova - please join! More info here: 

Monthly Community Call - July 29, 2026 at 5PM UTC 

[breakingspell]

The community (particularly those affected by regressions in the new design), aren't able to provide actionable feedback or discussion during these calls, correct? What's the point of joining?

[Jon]

@breakingspell the calls are open to the community to join live and participate—ask questions and share feedback. It's an opportunity to bring the product teams and community closer together, and we're really hoping it becomes a regular thing 😃 

[breakingspell]

Thanks for clarifying! It may be apt to update the meeting guide to specify that users/contributors are welcome to actively participate in the calls, not just corporate/employees. 

[Jon]

Good call! Definitely due for some updates. 

[tclementdev]

Sad to see this is just an uninspired copy of the current design trend of making everything padded and rounded. Apple did the same and unsurprisingly is already walking back from this in their upcoming macOS (killing their padded sidebar and big rounded window corners). As others have mentioned already, this is a UX downgrade, and even when using the compact mode. I wish for this to just be cancelled but if you are going this way then you should add the necessary options for users who think the current UI is just fine and allow them to happily continue using it.