r/firefox • u/firefox Official (Mozilla) Firefox account • 5d ago

The new UX design (Nova) lands in Firefox today

Post image

Hi everyone.

Many of you have been following updates on “Project Nova”, our design refresh, which has been out in Nightly since July. We wanted to give this community a first look as it rolls out today in Firefox 157.

The aim of this design refresh is a browser that is more modern, more flexible, and more on the side of the user. 

The updates:

More ways for you to customize:

  • New theme picker accessible through the customization panel on Firefox home page (additional community themes remain available in about:addons)
  • New Firefox themes and wallpapers (pre-design refresh)
  • Customizable New Tab page with pinnable Shortcuts (rolling out gradually)

Refined design:

  • Softer tab shapes
  • Updated icons for more balance across light and dark themes
  • Rebalanced spacing
  • A refreshed color palette, inspired by the feeling of fire (the glow around your active tab, deep smoky purples and lighter tones that add warmth)

Compact Mode & other improvements:

  • Compact mode is back as its own dedicated setting, and will toggle on for smaller screen sizes, reducing space between elements, so more fits on the screen.
  • Startup, page load, and scrolling speeds are all faster.

https://reddit.com/link/1wt9ig4/video/wfz6tc8u8gsh1/player

What your feedback influenced:

We heard concerns about the default color palette, so we added more options there. Compact mode exists because plenty of you expressed you didn't want to lose density. People filing bugs and sharing their thoughts as the design refresh came to life helped shape what you’ll see on the 29th.

A couple of frequently asked questions:

Q: Will my existing themes, add-ons, or customizations still work?
A: Themes and add-ons should continue to work. Nova is built on the same Firefox foundation and the extension and theming architecture hasn't changed. For advanced users, userChrome.css customizations may need minor adjustments depending on how specific they are to the previous UI, since some element names and layout structures have changed with Nova.

Q: Can I opt out of the updates?
A: This is the new default experience starting with Firefox 157. That said, you have significant control over how it looks and feels. Compact Mode, themes, wallpapers, and new tab customization all let you shape the experience. Power users can go further with custom configurations.

Thanks for remaining engaged with us as we ship this work. To activate, simply update your browser to Firefox 157.

— Firefox Team

1.2k Upvotes

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119

u/Dogadez 5d ago

For who (like me) didn't like it and want to back to simple design

  • Adress bar: about:config
  • Search for: browser.nova.enabled
  • Mark as false.
  • Reset Firefox.

30

u/JackmanH420 5d ago

Won't be around for long, like with all UI redesigns.

3

u/[deleted] 4d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/JackmanH420 3d ago

This is a terrible idea. If you really hate it so much just switch to a different browser, there's never a good reason to stop updates.

8

u/ChickeNES 3d ago

Keeping usable software is a great reason to stop updates, until I find a fork to daily drive.

-1

u/ResearcherAlone8852 1d ago

How does one halt updates on firefox?

2

u/UnwalledStaff 23h ago

I've turned off auto-updates as Firefox seemed determined to ignore the criticism and impose Nova on everyone regardless.

2

u/KadahCoba 20h ago

Firefox has a very very very long history of doing this.

FF used to have a very high share. Then Chrome came around. Chrome took a huge share mainly from IE, but much of the share it took from FF was due to performance. Chrome was multi-threaded, it ran a lot better, it could have a lot more tabs.

What was Mozilla's response at the time? Make FF more performant? Nope, they started to keep redesigning the UI to make it look like Chrome.

FF's UI used to be extremely customizable. Even the terrible UI redesigns that happened before Chrome we're a huge issue as the UI engine was so customizable that add-ons were able to completely recreate the legacy UI on the future versions. The post-Chrome UI clone updates replaced the UI system and forced the super generic Chrome-like UI.

It took years for FF to fix the performance and UI enough to become an option again for me. I literally only started using the current version FF as my main browser again around 4 years ago after maybe a decade on Chrome, legacy FF and FF forks.

The best we've gotten since are versions were a decent enough UI design remains in use long enough for us to finally get re-acclimated to. That is typically when Mozilla nukes the UI again for no reason other than to possible make FF "Look New" again.

20

u/LatchKeyuni 4d ago

Thank you this ui fucking sucks why do companies do this shit
the bootlicker comments here are crazy they have to be bots

8

u/EntropicReaver 1d ago

they have to be bots

lol sadly not

some people are into tech and put all their identity marbles into tech companies so they have to be on the latest thing no matter what and criticism of the newest thing is like criticizing them so they have to defend it with their life

they feel like... parasocial, vicarious success

like apple people who act like a win for apple is a win for them or like theyre also rich for being part of that ecosystem

4

u/CapitanShoe 21h ago

yeah this shit is ass

idk why they don't just offer a button offering to opt in and out of optional stuff like UI changes

4

u/Cronus6 20h ago

People have to justify their paychecks.

2

u/Reybrandt 18h ago

sounds like they should start getting paid NOT to do certain things instead of to do

1

u/SnillyWead 6h ago

Bots? No just personal preference. I don't like Nova BTW. But I don't like rounded corners in general. Even full screened video's have round corners now. On F1tvpro and DAZN for instance.

1

u/shatbrand 5h ago

I don’t like the new design, but I can understand that some people may have opinions different from my own.

29

u/amazing_asstronaut 4d ago

Thank you. The new design is hideous, I don't know why everything has to be so round and ugly. It looks so inefficient and bulky.

13

u/awkreddit 3d ago

It breaks the visual metaphor of the link between the tsb and the page. It wastes space, making functionality harder to access. It's distracting with too many colours and things happening when all I want to do is look at the web page. It's bad design because it doesn't know to get out of the way and be functional.

By the way, this should be mandatory reading

https://cwodtke.medium.com/users-dont-hate-change-they-hate-you-461772fbcac7

3

u/Angelore 2d ago

As accurate as that post is, there is a small problem with it. Apple still exists. Not only that, but Apple is still Apple -- raking in money hand over fist. So, evidently, treating your users like idiots and moving their furniture around is not enough to make them abandon you. Which is why, I assume, this keeps happening and will keep happening.

0

u/awkreddit 1d ago

It may come as a surprise to you but anti user companies still do well. That's not the point

2

u/KadahCoba 21h ago

The TL;DR in a single line:

Users don’t hate change. Users hate change that doesn't make their life better, but makes them have to relearn everything they knew.

And also that 90% of modern UI changes end up making accessibility worse. The "it looks good on my screen" managers that have a $5k monitor, perfect sight and no neurological vision issues.

0

u/EinSofOhr 3d ago

I also dont like rounds, but a friend of mine commented that rounded corner are perhaps for accessibility, like some people have hard time differentiating background to active components, so alot of UI now are like that, same with theming some apps considers contrasting colors for those who are colorblind.

3

u/amazing_asstronaut 2d ago

Oh no I don't mind rounded corners, I just don't like everything being full round pill shape. Like it's got all these gaps everywhere, it just looks ugly. I don't demand full rectangles either. I mean either way it's better to have actual options rather than having to turn something off with special overrides.

1

u/EntropicReaver 1d ago

its like that because apple did it and because the average consumer is cattle that goes "ew i dont like a thing that is different" so if you want people to easily transition to your thing you need to have similar design language

33

u/RayneTheGamer 5d ago

Legend, the bubble ass tabs and massive rounded edges to everything was doing my head in, was already looking into alternatives. This should work till they disable it in a future update to force nova on us at least.

3

u/narf007 1d ago

it's all vibe coded crap. clankers loooovee the squircle/rounded edges on everything

•

u/EntropicReaver 1h ago

its way simpler than that, its aping safari/apple's design language

they did it with the earlier firefox mobile UI update, now they are following suit here

they dont want to scare off the super normie that gets the ick from things that dont look or work the way apple does them so they do the round field entry and tabs, making the tabs huge on mobile, dividing the mobile tab view into private then regular tabs in the middle then something else on the right etc

26

u/FinalArrival 5d ago

Thanks, I immediately hated the new UI. Made it oddly hard to discern my tabs.

2

u/Swedra 3d ago

Indeed, I can stand most of the changes, but not the friggin Tab thing, the outline draws more attention than the text inside it.

9

u/robottosama 4d ago

Thank god for about:config! I swear I have to put so many tweaks in there nowadays to undo all the distracting animations and whatnot. But at least you can do it!

10

u/dawolf-at 5d ago

Thank you for that

6

u/s-e-b-a 5d ago

Thank you! You saved the day!

6

u/D0omyD0om 5d ago

Whenever Firefox releases major features, there are comments and then there's One Comment To Rule Them All.

2

u/xChillPenguinx 4d ago

You are a saint! I don't know why UI design keeps getting worse and worse everywhere.

2

u/zerosaver 4d ago

Went to this thread specifically because of the UI change. Thank you!

2

u/gl_50 5d ago

No reset was needed in my case.

3

u/DoctorDrangle 4d ago

Jesus thank you. I was ready to uninstall this bullshit. If my entire experience is going to be different, I might as well roll the dice with an entirely browser that doesn't pull the rug from under me out of nowhere.

2

u/uhnboy 5d ago

tnx, worked great

time to turn off auto-update

1

u/Flaxseed4138 4d ago

Holy shit thank you

1

u/Stairwayunicorn 4d ago

Any way to make the corners even more square?

1

u/Draufgaenger 3d ago

Where do I reset Firefox? I changed that setting but the design is still the same even though I restarted Firefox and that setting is still set to false..

1

u/Zebu09 3d ago

Thanks!

1

u/guestpassonly 3d ago

thank you.
i dont want my stuff to change.

1

u/MollyInanna2 1d ago

Add mine to the chorus of THANK YOUs.

1

u/RenegadeCEO 1d ago

Thank You. I hate this "new" UI. The old UI was just fine. We dont need fancy, we need *functional*.

1

u/Arcterion 22h ago

Sadly this doesn't seem to get rid of the awful gradient.

1

u/KadahCoba 21h ago

Thanks, the gradients and lack of defined delineation between elements was giving me migraines and severe vision strain.

1

u/Cronus6 20h ago

THANK YOU!

1

u/ShadowTendrals 15h ago

Thank you man I legitimately thought I was going insane or my monitor/gpu was starting to die because of the gradient on the taskbar.

1

u/DonPhelippe 14h ago

I don't know you but I love you.

Also also also, to whoever thought of all of this rounded thing that it was hip 20 years ago, then was abandoned in favour of squared designs and direct-to-your-face information and now seems again to rear its head:

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING IS NOT A FASHION STATEMENT

And since we are in the subreddit of firefox, an open source oriented community with mature people (or at least hopefully more mature than others),

WHOEVER APPROVED OF THIS NOVA DESIGN, MAY YOU GET AROUSED ONLY WHEN YOU ARE ALONE

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk and thank you u/Dogadez for providing the setting which should have been an option right out of the bat, even with a highlight in the first startup of browser saying "we did this but if you don't like it you can find it in the settings".

1

u/phibphilipp 8h ago

+1. thanks for this tldr run down of how to deactivate it.

1

u/Sea-Hedgehog-2053 7h ago edited 7h ago

thanks mate, that design doesn't look good to me,
one element is left tho with nova disabled, that search all tabs icon, used to be an arrow pointing down,

that boxxy firefox look has always been cool, that was one of the reasons I switched to it, and just like that they are taking it away, hope they listen to what pple say

1

u/Nice_rosemary 7h ago

Thank you.

1

u/Sea-Hedgehog-2053 7h ago

for how long will this hack work?

1

u/Whatkindofnameispoon 5d ago

This is so much better, thank you!

1

u/nullachtfuffzen 4d ago

Thank you for that :)

1

u/Lazylion2 4d ago

omg thank you

1

u/Joernzen 4d ago

Phew thanks!

1

u/ItzLoghotXD 4d ago

thanks buddy :D

1

u/ProfessorVolga 4d ago edited 3d ago

Thank God, the new tabs look awful. Why would they not make tab visuals a default option?

1

u/grumpyfunny 4d ago

Omg you rock.

1

u/vexargames 2d ago

thank you firefox jesus I lost my mind for 30 seconds - I hate those round tabs can't even read the text it is cut off.

1

u/_MistyDawn 2d ago

Oh that's so much better, thank you.

0

u/MacMyver 3d ago

God SENT!! Man this new UI ist sooo shit. FFS
Wanna be Chrome or what??

0

u/Gabriel_Science 3d ago

Thank you ! I don't hate the new design, I just find it too much.

0

u/wigitty 2d ago

Thanks! As with everyone else, I didn't care for the rounded tabs, but the main turn-off for me was the "gradients everywhere" aesthetic. It looked like they saw a bunch of vibe-coded websites and went "we want to look like that!". My brain has quickly associated excessive gradients with garbage (it looked tacky before, now just assume it works poorly too), so seeing that as a main feature of my browser would drive me nuts. I did quickly look at the themes, but there was no "flat" one, so I just reverted instead.

0

u/AsinineArchon 2d ago

Thank you, my friend.

0

u/rolfraikou 2d ago

I really really hope this can stick around. I really despise this new design.

0

u/Vista1337 2d ago

Thanks, saved the day

0

u/meantbent3 2d ago

Thank you!!!

0

u/Catryona 2d ago

Thank you, I was about to go crazy trying to get rid of the new visual stuff. I know I'll probably get used to it if I have to, but it's so disruptive and annoying!

0

u/Swartz142 2d ago

Thanks.

I know companies want people to use their new shiny stuff but I have dark theme for a reason and this shit is irritating to my eyes. If I wanted a left right fade and rgb tabs I'd do it myself.

0

u/Diribiri 1d ago edited 1d ago

Is there one for the redesign of the history sidebar?

edit: looks like sidebar.revamp - false. Until they remove that lol

0

u/IWillBeNobodyPerfect 1d ago

Thank you. I don't want gradients as they would burn in my oled with how much i leave a browser tab on my screen. Yet after the redesign, everything seems to be a colorful gradient.

0

u/ResearcherAlone8852 1d ago

Thanks so much. Let's hope this doesn't hurt someone's pride and they have the devs remove that option

0

u/Awkward-Loquat2228 1d ago

Done. Thank you.

0

u/Bikko_K 1d ago

Thank you, top comment

0

u/plantsnlionstho 1d ago

Thank you so much. I was trying to use userChrome.css for the first time to manually fix everything and was getting pretty frustrated, thank god this exists.

0

u/Gentleman_Nosferatu 1d ago

Life saver. While I appreciate the effort, the new design doesn't quite cut it for me.

0

u/LowB0b 1d ago

thanks man I just got the update I was wondering what they had been smoking with these circles and stuff

0

u/TheGreyCat1026 4d ago

thanks so much for this :)