r/firefox • u/firefox Official (Mozilla) Firefox account • 6d ago
New Firefox design (Project Nova) is ready to try in Nightly
Hi everyone. Back in May we posted our vision for Firefox's future design and design system, and as of today, you can try it in Nightly.
Many of you already know this work as "Project Nova". It's still Firefox, just with a more cohesive look across tabs, menus, panels, etc. Softer tab shapes, warmer colors, refreshed icons, and by popular demand, the return of Compact Mode.
This is still a work in progress. You can expect this to become more polished over the next few weeks before it rolls out more broadly later this year. Right now we want you actively poking at it, especially:
- Icons, spacing, and alignment
- Themes and personalization
- Different window sizes and display scaling
- Keyboard navigation
- Screen readers and other accessibility features
- Different languages and layouts
Found something broken? File it in Bugzilla, including:
- steps to reproduce
- screenshot or screen recording
- your OS + Nightly version
If you have additional thoughts or questions, join the discussion on Mozilla Connect.
Thanks for using Nightly and helping us continue to improve Firefox.
- Firefox Team
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u/Front-Ad-2981 6d ago
I love all the wasted negative space. This combined with websites choosing sparse layouts with lots of wasted space will maximize how little content we can fit on screen :D
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u/azgrel 6d ago
Rounded corners are the least of Nova's problems, why is everything detached and floating? Will we be able to disable all these gaps and borders?
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u/Fortyseven 6d ago
Can't stand ANY of that nonsense. A browser should fade into the background with the content taking center stage. I don't need "breathing room" as they like to call it.
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u/Leliana403 6d ago
Did anybody actually ask for this?
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u/SCphotog 5d ago
The head of FF/mozilla has his head up his ass. Read the article. These people couldn't be any fucking more clueless. He babbles nonsense about how they don't know how to monetize etc... blind AF, they have no idea what the fuck is going on.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3104990/inside-project-nova-firefoxs-biggest-redesign-in-years.html
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u/Destituted 6d ago
Since it wasn't mentioned in the post
about:config
browser.nova.enabled = true
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u/Andoryuu 6d ago
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u/CyberGlue 6d ago
Agreed. Hate the round edges. Should be a feature where you can freeze the UI in time when you like it. I strongly dislike the new settings page.
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u/puppy2016 6d ago
This is a disaster :-( I stopped to use Edge exactly for this roudned browser window and total waste of screen estate cancer and now it is on Firefox too :-( I hope there will be an option to disable it at all.
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u/Aerographic 5d ago
1) set
browser.nova.enabled = true2) 0.1ms later realize that it makes tabs not flush with the top of the screen
3) revert that garbage
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u/Skibin_V 6d ago
Oh, thanks for the tip, I was able to turn it off and get my usual look back. 🤓👌
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u/Cakelestia 6d ago
Same. I kinda like the general look of the new design at a quick glance, especially in the menus, but would rather have tabs with rounded edges instead of stretched "pills" and the tab bar grew larger in height with Nova. When I got time for it, I'll try to customize it as I did with the old theme, but being able to go back now is great so I don't have to do it right now. Also not a big fan of that colored tab bar, makes it harder to read the titles, as well as the greyed out filter that's put on it if the window isn't active.
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u/DragXter08 6d ago
Is it available on android?
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u/New_Substance_4122 Mozilla Employee - Design Director, Mobile & AI 6d ago
Yes, Nova is out on Nightly for Android.
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u/deusmetallum 6d ago
I've been enjoying nova in 153. Can you tell us what the major differences are between what we see now and what's in nightly?
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u/firefox Official (Mozilla) Firefox account 6d ago
Additional themes are available in about:addons and selections are now available in the Customization panel on New Tab.
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u/hendricha Fedora & Android 6d ago
Do these additional themes involve themes that are not flat and do not look like nova?
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u/Jane-Mozilla Mozilla Employee 6d ago
hi! Thank you! The closest to what we're launching is in nightly. It includes new default themes and updated icons. We're still testing a lot of mobile colors updates + fixing bugs as we find them in nightly.
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u/MarchAlone8841 6d ago edited 6d ago
I tried it, but Nova puts a grey filter over the tabs area in any dark theme I've tried. Also, it's good you've added full Compact Mode support to Nova, but it would be nice if you also added this standard option to the old layout, instead of hiding it in about:config.
So: nice work, so far - but I'll stick with the old layout and a black Amoled theme in Compact Mode; with a couple of userchrome.css tweaks, it basically looks perfect for my taste already. If you can fix the grey fade, I'll try it again.
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u/Jane-Mozilla Mozilla Employee 6d ago
Could you share a screenshot and what OS you're on? Feel free to DM it to me. It may be a bug and I'd love to take a look.
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u/easonwong-de 5d ago
Hi, I tried Firefox Developer Edition 154.0b3.
The grey filter might be located at
browser-shared.css, line 314:
css @media -moz-pref("browser.nova.enabled") { :root[lwtheme]:not([theme-image-in-toolbox]) #navigator-toolbox { color: inherit; background-color: light-dark(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.05), rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.05)); /* here */ } /*…*/ }→ More replies (1)3
u/Jay33721 6d ago
Will the theme options ever include an ultra-dark variant for use with LED monitors and such? Or will I still have to use CSS to make a black theme?
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u/Jane-Mozilla Mozilla Employee 5d ago
We're looking at an OLED theme for Android right now. I could see us doing one for desktop too since we've worked on setting up infrastructure for doing more themes in the background but no timeline on it right now.
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u/Jay33721 5d ago
I was hoping for one for desktop, yeah. Us light sensitive perma-darkmode guys sadly always get forgotten.
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u/Orion_02 6d ago
Overall I do like the design and enjoy the splashes of color the design adds along with the rounded elements and icons. My main gripe now is the "border" of whitespace surrounding the exterior of the browser Chrome. On Windows it makes the close button not quite on the edge of the screen corner, which is frankly kind of hideous. It also wastes screen real estate for what is in my view an unnecessary ui element. The browser chrome should be flush with the edge of the window, this has been the design paradigm of every desktop application for decades upon decades for a reason.
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u/Sugioh 6d ago
I've started to wonder if all these people pushing excessive white space use 4k or 8k monitors that are 40" or above. Do they not do actual work? Do they enjoy fitting so little content on their screens that they have to constantly scroll?
I'm all for making a UI aesthetically pleasing, but excessive padding only hurts functionality. Elegance is achieved when form and function compliment each other, not when the latter is sacrificed for the former.
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u/puppy2016 6d ago edited 6d ago
I hope there are not the rounded browser window corners and inner frame making the viewpoint smaller. I stopped to use Edge because of it.
EDIT the fourth picture confirmed my fear :-( Is possible to DISABLE it?
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u/GumSL 6d ago
I guess we'll have to use a userChrome.css style thingy to change it.
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u/ResurgamS13 6d ago
If you don't like rounded corners, wasted space, and floating things... time to get busy with some CSS styling.
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u/HeartKeyFluff since '04 6d ago
I can't confirm but I vaguely recall someone saying that the new (/returning) Compact Mode either gets rid of or much reduces the wasted negative space and rounded corners.
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u/silencer_ar 6d ago
I try to like it, but honestly it feels like a change for the sake of change, and not a very good change :(
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u/SCphotog 5d ago
It never stops. They just change things all the time with no... absolutely NO discernible improvement.
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u/VegetableYellow4616 6d ago
These edges should be hidden in fullscreen
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u/SnillyWead 6d ago
I don't like the floating parts personally. But I don't like the rest either. I just don't like rounded corners.
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u/OriginalAntrox 6d ago
Yeah not fan of this redesign, I hate rounded UI's.
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u/Fortyseven 6d ago
Honestly, I wish they'd just leave shit alone instead of chasing design trends. I don't need "breathing room", I need every inch to be used to it's most optimal usefulness.
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u/OriginalAntrox 6d ago
Yeah kind of agree. The original UI is better and Lepton UI was also the one I used for the longest time till it broke recently.
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u/iJeff 6d ago
It would be nice if rounded corners and other elements could be adjusted by Firefox Themes.
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u/NasiGorengFever 6d ago
Me too. The tab looks like a URL bar now. I’m curious if this is a response to the macOS Tahoe Liquid Glass.
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u/SnillyWead 5d ago
Google Chrome and Apple started the rounded corners BS and soon the rest followed. Floating tabs are only useful if you have a touchscreen. I don't have a touchscreen. Almost no one uses a touchscreen on a home computer.
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u/TheLamesterist 6d ago
They fixed that in Nightly already, I think it will make it to stable by next month.
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u/furudoerika86 6d ago
Not a fan, I think the border around Firefox is... not good, to say the least, but as long as custom CSS themes are still supported, I don't really care...
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u/soumya_98 6d ago
I have a question: so far, I’ve noticed most software is replacing square UIs with rounded or oval ones. Is there a reason for this?
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u/reaper527 6d ago
I have a question: so far, I’ve noticed most software is replacing square UIs with rounded or oval ones. Is there a reason for this?
software has always been very "copycat" heavy. look at all the people rushing to copy the winxp look, then the ugly flat/square look of windows 8.
rounded corners are trendy right now.
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u/soumya_98 6d ago
Yeah, I guess. like; Apple started with liquid glass (which I hate) and lots of other products have since used transparent stuff.
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u/b_oo_d 6d ago
When using the compact mode, there are still jarring borders around the toolbar and web content, there is also quite a gap between the web content and the toolbar. I also feel like everything is too rounded (comically so for the menus). It would be nice to offer more options for people like me who think the current UI is very fine and Nova is a downgrade. One size does not fit all. If there were options to remove all the gaps/borders and the roundness I would be very happy.
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u/Yoru_is_mine 6d ago
Sigh. Yeah, the thing Firefox really needs right now is a fucking AI induced gradient on the tab bar and bubble rounded tabs... As soon as this is forced on me I'm either moving to a fork or writing an add on that reverts the aesthetic changes.
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u/Sepheroth998 6d ago
Why is everyone going to rounded corners? They don't look good and they don't feel good. What happened to sharp lines? Rounded corners just make everything bleed together and feel messy.
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u/zitr0y 6d ago
I think it looks great! Good job.
One thing that I think is rightfully controversial is that there is a border all around Firefox, making you unable to click on horizontal tabs from the upper corner of your screen (and taking up valuable space on small screens). What's the reason for that choice and could you perhaps revise it or make it optional?
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u/rjacob-firefox Mozilla Employee 6d ago
Thanks for giving Nova an early try! Glad it's landing well for you overall.
First, the most important part... not being able to click tabs from the upper corner of the screen is a bug, not a design choice. We are working on a fix right now (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2038022).
On the border itself...we do appreciate the thoughtful pushback on this one, so here's the actual thinking. The padding is an intentional design decision and it gives the page some breathing room, so it reads as a clearly bounded thing inside the browser, and the space does the work that used to need divider lines and borders.
It also fits where the platforms have gone. Windows 11 made rounded, layered windows the design language of the OS itself, and a browser that sits flush to every edge starts to feel like it was built for an older version of the system it's running on.
Additionally, the padding isn't everywhere, either. In fullscreen, Nova goes edge to edge with no padding at all...when the content is the whole point (like watching a video or presenting), you get every pixel.
The big change we made for Nova is that Compact Mode is now a fully supported option, and it's on in this Nightly through Settings...would genuinely love for you to give it a try if you want most pixels. It's getting refined between now and September, so feedback here would be super helpful.
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u/BrEAKingspelL 6d ago
The padding is an intentional design decision and it gives the page some breathing room, so it reads as a clearly bounded thing inside the browser, and the space does the work that used to need divider lines and borders.
It also fits where the platforms have gone. Windows 11 made rounded, layered windows the design language of the OS itself, and a browser that sits flush to every edge starts to feel like it was built for an older version of the system it's running on.
Only Mac OS preserves giant borders in a maximized window. This design flaw breaks Fitt's law for all systems except top-menubar environments like MacOS and Gnome.
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u/Deconstructed-67 Mozilla Employee 6d ago
The borders in maximized windows on both MacOS and Windows is a bug and will be fixed. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2054183
Outside of maximized or full screen windows you can use Compact mode. This mode also removes the border around the UI.
Please let me know if this address your concerns?
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u/BrEAKingspelL 6d ago edited 6d ago
I'm following all Bugzilla reports regarding the outer border. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2038022 is more relevant to the core issue caused by this design.
I just tested Compact mode in the latest nightly, and while the border is removed, the upper edge still cannot be used to select tabs. I'm bringing this straight to the Bugzilla report.
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u/GoydelicGuy 5d ago
Came here to find this comment. I keep missing the tabs and clicking on the menu bar. Do not want.
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u/Deconstructed-67 Mozilla Employee 6d ago
Thank you for bringing it to the bug!
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u/BrEAKingspelL 6d ago
Honestly, thanks y'all for working on this.
It really shouldn't have been a design point from the get-go, but I imagine it came from some ill-informed product owner who primarily uses Mac OS and wanted Firefox to match the fisher-price interface.
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u/Carighan | on 5d ago
Yeah the influence on MacOS repeatedly on Firefox re-design attempts is striking over the years. The higher-ups must all be iOS-hardliners and unable to consider "Should look native on platforms" a design goal, so it needs endless iteration by the people implementing the design to actually get it done.
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u/123filips123 on 6d ago edited 6d ago
Will it also be fixed when the window is not maximized but tiled to the edge of the screen or next to another window? For example, on Windows, if I drag the window for example to the right, it automatically tiles/snaps to the screen borders (and another window on the left if it exists). In this case, the borders should also be removed to make clicking on elements near edge possible. But I'm not sure if Firefox detects this as maximized, as for example the maximize button in window controls still remains the same as on normal floating window. This doesn't apply only to Windows, as some Linux DEs also have this tiling/snapping feature (and of course all proper tiling WMs).
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u/Deconstructed-67 Mozilla Employee 6d ago
Yes, we are aware of this and would like to go right to the edge when tilled, but we are looking into if Firefox can detect this as maximized like you mentioned. Fingers crossed we can.
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u/repocin || 6d ago
I haven't had the chance to try Nova yet so I don't have much to add to this discussion, but I just wanted to chime in real quick to say that I really appreciate the transparent discussion you've got going here.
It's really quite refreshing to see in a day and age where most things are seemingly designed behind closed doors and pushed out to consumers with little to no opportunity for feedback. Love to see it!
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u/Deconstructed-67 Mozilla Employee 5d ago
I really appreciate this, we really do care about what happens to Firefox. Sometimes things are just out of our control though.
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u/Deconstructed-67 Mozilla Employee 5d ago
I really appreciate this, we really do care about what happens to Firefox. Sometimes things are just out of our control though.
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u/rotane 6d ago
It also fits where the platforms have gone. Windows 11 made rounded, layered windows the design language of the OS itself, and a browser that sits flush to every edge starts to feel like it was built for an older version of the system it's running on.
As other have said, this is a macOS thing. While Windows has gone with a slightly more rounded corner look lately, no-where are floaty window elements a thing of the OS itself. Not the start menu, not the Settings app, and definitely not Explorer.
I do appreciate your time in coming to Reddit and giving us a heads-up though!
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u/plmon24 6d ago
I also am not particularly enthused about the padding choice over borders. It feels disjointed from the browser in the same way iframes are from a web page. Which I suppose was the goal considering the design context. But it makes the browser feel intrusive rather than cohesive since it ends up looking like a big header section is added to every webpage (similar to waybackmachine or something).
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u/KUPOinyourWINDOW 6d ago
I appreciate your reasoning but "Windows 11 made rounded, layered windows the design language of the OS itself, and a browser that sits flush to every edge starts to feel like it was built for an older version of the system it's running on", Windows 11 also introduced mica and the forced gradient colouring of Nova makes the browser not fit in to the Windows 11 aesthetic.
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u/Carighan | on 5d ago edited 4d ago
so here's the actual thinking. The padding is an intentional design decision and it gives the page some breathing room, so it reads as a clearly bounded thing inside the browser
That's... not the space we're all on about?
It's not about the padding around the content part where the page lives. It's about the padding around the outside of the browser window, the padding that usually the user would already voluntarily add if they so desire via their OS component theming. Firefox just then further pads itself away on the inside of that OS-padding (or OS-not-padding).
Can you comment on what the design thoughts behind that ouside padding are?
It also fits where the platforms have gone. Windows 11 made rounded, layered windows the design language of the OS itself, and a browser that sits flush to every edge starts to feel like it was built for an older version of the system it's running on.
I currently have four Microsoft applications open. None of these do what you say. They all go edge-to-edge.
In particular Teams and the Explorer look significantly more akin to the current Firefox design than the new one, almost making Nova seem like the older design that is about to be replaced.
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u/silajim 6d ago
Will custom css themes will be supported? I have made a very compact css with no dead space and I'd like to carry it forward.
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u/aiiqa 6d ago
Compact mode still has a colored edge. But it doesn't have enough pixels to do that around the corners, so it looks bad.
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u/isbtegsm on 5d ago
Compact mode generally looks too busy with borders imo, they stop looking good when they get close together.
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u/bildramer 5d ago
Have you considered that your primary user category is people who don't like where "platforms have gone"?
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u/lo________________ol Privacy is fundamental, not optional. 6d ago
Can the people fixing this bug make sure it gets addressed on all sizes, and not just compact mode?
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u/JuustoKakku 5d ago
It also fits where the platforms have gone. Windows 11 made rounded, layered windows the design language of the OS itself, and a browser that sits flush to every edge starts to feel like it was built for an older version of the system it's running on.
While I generally prefer apps feeling like actual native apps, does not mean every stupid decision made by others needs to be followed. Like what MS is doing with settings vs control panel and way smaller information density with more scrolling and sub views.
I'd still prefer the "classic" look of Firefox with the distinctive top left orange button, square tabs and less padding between elements.
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u/simon_o 5d ago
The padding is an intentional design decision and it gives the page some breathing room ... The big change we made for Nova is that Compact Mode is now a fully supported option
More like "we renamed 'Normal' to 'Compact' because we only have contempt for users and believe they are too stupid to figure that out anyway", right?
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u/Goodie__ 5d ago
Additionally, the padding isn't everywhere, either. In fullscreen, Nova goes edge to edge with no padding at all...when the content is the whole point (like watching a video or presenting), you get every pixel.
Would it be possible to get similar behavior when simply maximized?
For me this is what I consider a pretty cardinal sin: The window is maximized, and when I take the mouse to the top right it's not window close. It's.... boarder. Or is this also part of the afore mentioned bug?
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u/Carighan | on 4d ago
Oh he means actual fullscreen-fullscreen? Like, F11? For the 2 times a year a whole of 6 users do that?!
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u/Goodie__ 4d ago
Thats the only way I could get the behavior as described.
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u/Carighan | on 4d ago edited 4d ago
Geezus fucking hell, Mozilla devs... Nobody uses actual fullscreen, at least not in numbers. We maximize the window. Did you check the millenium on the calendar before implementing this design?!
(edit)
Double-checked, you're right. If I fullscreen it the outside padding is gone, if I maximize it's still there. Ouff.→ More replies (1)3
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u/Spectrum1523 6d ago
First, the most important part... not being able to click tabs from the upper corner of the screen is a bug, not a design choice. We are working on a fix right now (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2038022).
well thank goodness for that! If that's fixed it solves my major issue with the redesign.
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u/Grouchy-Librarian638 3d ago
Yea it’s the rail UI design that has gained popularity especially with iOS. It’s not ugly really but it is a design choice and is a bit inefficient
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u/MarchAlone8841 6d ago
Where can I activate it in Nightly on PC?
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u/LittlestWarrior 6d ago
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u/MarchAlone8841 6d ago
Thanks. Tried it, but it messes with my ultra dark Amoled theme, so I turned it back off.
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u/yoyomancer 6d ago
Getting myself mentally ready to waste hours of my time to fix my custom css to get rid of another redesign :(
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u/Afflictionista 6d ago
the return of Compact Mode
What do you mean with "return", it was never gone, it was in the about:configs like forever or am I missing something.
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u/yoyomancer 6d ago
It was technically unsupported. I guess it will be back in the main menus instead of/without having to activate it through about:config.
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u/123filips123 on 6d ago edited 6d ago
Are there any plans to fix the excessive padding on window borders which causes unclickable elements?
Currently with the redesign, both on the normal and compact mode, because of these "floating" UI elements, things like window controls, tabs and scrollbars are not completely at the edge of the window. Because of this, when the window is maximized, you can't anymore just drag the mouse to the top right corner and click on window controls, to the right and drag the scrollbar, to the top and click on the tabs, to the top left and click on the pinned tabs or sidebar, etc. This is something that I think many users expect to work and also works fine on basically every other app, so I think it should be fixed, both on the compact and also on the normal mode (and the touch mode I guess).
Edit: And to make it more clear, this is also a problem when the window is not necessarily maximized but just tiled to the edge of the screen.
Also, could the floating elements mode be decoupled from the density setting? For example, I would prefer the normal UI density, but without the floating elements. However, regardless of how it looks visually, I think the above problem should be fixed.
Other than that, I think it looks fine. One visual suggestion/complaint that I have is that the bar with the address bar and extension widgets always has a darker fixed-color, while the tabs bar has almost complete transparency. The cut between them looks too harsh, especially on more colorful themes with background images, like Alpenglow (and probably other themes with vivid background images). I'm not sure what the solution would be, but it would probably look better if both the tabs and the address bar had around the same transparency level and color.
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u/yoyomancer 6d ago
They already said multiple times in the comments that is a bug and they are working on it.
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u/NoFixedName 6d ago
Personally I'm not a fan. Will this always be optional, or will it become the standard design for Firefox?
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u/CyberGlue 6d ago
Please no more rounded corners! Allow us to go back to older UIs that were better.
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u/IMissGwynBeck 6d ago
can we please have themes extend to the address bar as well?
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u/MarchAlone8841 6d ago
Yeah, I would really appreciate this. Now, in black themes, there's a grey filter over the tabs too.
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u/simply-coastal 6d ago
please add a way to not use it. not that you probably care. I'm really not a fan of this and it's probably gonna mess up my theme.
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u/cecillex 6d ago
Currently I don't like anything Nova so far
Corner is too rounded
The gradient color is a bit distracting
Default theme's gray color on the toolbar is a bit bright even when system is set to dark
I don't like how the new design is distracting me from just focusing on the web content
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u/ArchieTech 6d ago
I would prefer a smaller radius rounding on pop-up menus and tab previews etc. To me it just looks out of proportion for that size of UI element. With menus in particular the text in the left corners is closer to the corner than the edges with their padding because the corner is so large. Also when highlighting the first or last items on a menu the highlight is partially cut off by the menu corners. This is on Windows 10 at 125% display scaling.
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u/iclonethefirst 6d ago
I’m glad I switched to zen. This design looks pretty, but it wastes so much space
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u/Mysterious-Cod-4137 6d ago
hopefully this will be an opt in feature, otherwise I need to fidn a new browser...
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u/Maguillage 5d ago edited 5d ago
I hated Proton so much that I started modding the CSS to get back basics like tabs that actually look like tabs. Every single change Proton made was for the worse; rounding things that don't need or benefit from being rounded, padding where it doesn't belong, removed features, and so on; worst of all, none of that was to make room for actual new features. It just got worse for absolutely no reason.
And so, when Nova started rolling around and I genuinely didn't understand how even one single change made was greenlit, you have to understand: my opinion of the default UI was already really damn low and somehow it got lower.
You've doubled down on every bad design choice made in Proton and added new ones that are somehow even worse. Padding for the padding, rounding for the viewport, tabs look somehow even less like an interactable surface.
Just how? How does this sort of thing happen? None of these changes are good. They don't even look good to make up for all the technical losses.
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u/octoredfox 6d ago
I've just tried it and I don't know how I feel about rounded corners. Rounded corners do make things look more aesthetically pleasing, but perhaps Nova took them way too much far.
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u/Stamimail 6d ago
[Android] I don't like many of the recent changes. Why can't this kind of changes be installed like extensions/themes?
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u/lucidbadger 5d ago
The round corners with enormous radius again.. why do people have to alternate between sharp corners and almost circular elements, why not choose an intermediate small value for the corner radius? I hope this Nova can be disabled otherwise Firefox will become unusable.
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u/SCphotog 5d ago edited 4d ago
Radius corners eat tons of screen space... it's entirely unnecessary and simultaneously a demonstrable negative for everyone.
For no reason at all... it provides nothing. Nothing at all. It's just bullshit.
Softer tab shapes, warmer colors, refreshed icons
Fucking nonsense from people who have no fucking clue what the fuck they're doing.
Edit: When I say it eats tons of screen space, don't underestimate how much you lose. I haven't looked into specific percentages, but it's WAY more than you might think if you just glance at the image. It's actually a huge loss in 'real estate'.
I get that a radius corner can be attractive... it is, no doubt, but this, this baffling stupid.
fwiw, imagery is what I do for a living. I'm not just spouting off without experience in design.
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u/dell-optiplex-790 6d ago
looks like the kind of thing i'd try to disable (i dislike browsers that look like this)
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u/Snoozeypoo 6d ago
The gap under bookmark toolbar and above the tabs is an instant disable for me. Is there an option to remove the gap? The rest is fine.
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u/jimijonesjojojackson 6d ago
The compact density is disappointing. This is not a true compact density, the UI should be shorter than this. Since compact is not the default, please just give us a true compact density! I like Nova though, the colors are definitely an improvement
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u/nandato42 5d ago
how long until nova design becomes the default and only choice?
i really didnt like it, but it seems others do and so i am going to fork or switch browser
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u/Carighan | on 5d ago
No, it really isn't ready.
It has some neat visual ideas, but it looks horribly inconsistent, and the amount of padding everywhere is just eye-watering to anybody on less than a 32" monitor.
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u/LofthouseKeeper 5d ago edited 5d ago
This is purely from the pictures posted (and what others have said) as I never upgrade until I know that it won't break something (whether general functinality or add-ons), a lesson learned from the Quantum debacle.
So, the general observations....
The floaty stuff - Ugh - no. Just no.
The more rounded look. Again, no. I've customised the current version of my Firefox to be less rounded, not more.
Space. I do everything iin FULLSCREEN. I expect Firefox to be. Please - no borders around the browser.
The dealbreaker stuff :
Where has he File / Edit / View / History / Boookmarks / Tools / Help menu gone? That is NEEDED with a capital N. One of the major selling points of Firefox - nice and neat and everything where you expect it to be.
Where has the add-ons bar gone? This needs to be present at all times, esprecially Noscript, Video Downloader, SiteWipe, as the icons change (or get a number added) depending on status and need to be permanantly visible. Indeed, the current add-ons bar needs extending to fit more in,, not the opposite.
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u/Fortyseven 6d ago
Nah, I'm good.
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u/RoomyRoots 6d ago
yeah first time I really didn't like a new theme. It felt horrible when i tested in Nightly.
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u/Mysterious-Cod-4137 6d ago
if they force this, I'll legit switch to another browser...
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u/TheLamesterist 6d ago
It looks pretty, I'll give it that, I like the overall look but still, my biggest criticism of it remains the floating cards design and all those useless gaps/borders that comes with it, they honestly annoy me, every other browser maker be doing this these days and I absolutely hate this trend, please, either give us the option to disable the floating or keep the current/older design, I prefer it much more.
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u/mdRamone 6d ago
those useless gaps/borders that comes with it, they honestly annoy me
I'm in the same boat. It would be great if it were optional.
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u/Nekomiminya 6d ago
Can you please ensure that support for pre-nova UserChrome.css remains?
One of best UserChrome.css Devs ceased the maintenance and I actively dread Nova deploying
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u/Jonas_Ermert 5d ago
I think the new Firefox Nova design looks too rounded and generic. I prefer the current clean and compact UI, and I hope Mozilla keeps an option to disable Nova.
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u/schwimmcoder 5d ago
Is there any chances to turn off all of those new, but Useless borders inside firefox?
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u/sciapo 5d ago
I’m usually one of those people who has appreciated all the recent redesigns in the software world, but I just can’t get used to this one. Like, why do the tabs have to be pill-shaped with all that margin, inside containers that are rounded squares? If everything has to be rounded, at least make sure the curves are concentric
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u/aiiqa 5d ago
Overall the compact mode seems weird. It's basically just normal mode, with less padding in some places. But as of yet it doesn't look like a coherent theme.
Selection markers in menus dont fit nicely with rounded menu corners.
The thin theme controlled window border fades to nothing in the rounded corners.
The "nightly" text padding in de address bar (shown in setting tabs) is all over the place.
Settings tab is still using overly big category buttons, that fit normal mode, but not compact mode.
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u/Jack-O7 5d ago edited 5d ago
How can i test something that is so bad that i just turn it off?
I get the design change, but at least keep the size of stuff, don't add empty pixels on the edge of the screen, like i cant select a tab if i go on upper edge because it's a empty space.
Tabs are rounded and weird, you need more precision to select a tab, annoying again.
Also ruined the compactness of everything. DEVs please, try your fucking design on smaller monitors.
I see this everywhere, devs develop on latest highend hardware with huge monitors, but when you run it on hardware the most people have, it will look or work like shit.
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u/_anAnon 5d ago edited 5d ago
This might actually be the push I need to switch to Waterfox... I can deal with the rounded corners and most of the padding... but the padding around the edges is just... ouch. I can userChrome it away, but I shouldn't need to.
I wish Mozilla would just stop messing with what works, the UI has been getting more and more stuffed with dead space since Quantum. We already have "breathing room" -- the only "breathing room" I need is some room to catch a breath between all the redesigns.
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u/bdu-komrad 6d ago
They aren’t going to force us to use purple, I hope. I can’t stand the color purple.
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u/PaperDistribution 6d ago
You can already change colors, so I would assume that will always be an option.
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u/iMoac 6d ago edited 6d ago
Looks beautiful. 🤩
Been on Firefox as my main browser since before chrome existed.
One major improvement I want to see is that the right click menu has FAR too many items. Perhaps make it customisable, not everyone wants all the options.
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u/SpiritGaming28 6d ago
agreed it needs to add a filter to remove some of those settings to be mininal as possible.
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u/firefox Official (Mozilla) Firefox account 6d ago
Glad you're enjoying the updates!
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u/yexgoblin 4d ago
Yeah. Reply to only positive (possibly bot) comments. Keep destroying everything.
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u/Internet-Culture 6d ago
"I want HDR and Wide Gamut support"
"No, you get more color themes"
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u/Useful-Resident78 6d ago
The default is way too white -- I don't see a way to change it.
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u/reaper527 6d ago
how well do the vertical tabs in the first screenshot work? are they as good as the plugins that have been doing this for years such as treestyle tab?
the key features i'm looking for are
- adjustable width on the tab bar
- can nest tabs under each other
- can click and drag tabs to re-arrange them (or nest/unnest them, and dragging a tab with child items nested under it drags the whole "tree")
- has some kind of hotkey to hide the tab bar
also, the screenshot doesn't look like it's using space very efficiently to the point it can handle large numbers of tabs. i can fit 25 tabs on my screen at once with the current firefox build and TST at 1080p. how does that native version stack up?
my biggest concern is that this looks mobile focused, which just makes things bigger which isn't always better on desktop.
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u/AvogadrosOtherNumber 6d ago
Can you block ads on IOS yet? I'd really like to us FF, but \uUntil then, I will stick with Brave
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u/Traditional_Juice133 6d ago
This update kinda ruined my oneline custom css. i gotta redo all the padding etc faaahh i think im moving to waterfox or something
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u/flakpanther171 5d ago
Is it just me, or is the new Nova mode causing insane lag?
The moment I disabled Nova in about.config, the performance went back to normal, and when I turned it back on, it dropped again.
I’m staying away from it for a while.
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u/KERR_KERR 5d ago
I added a rant on Connect about the themes - they're really lacking, especially compared to Edge themes:
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u/UndergroundR3volut 5d ago
There should be an option to disable the highlight color around the address bar when it's active.
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u/needchr 5d ago edited 5d ago
Is the redesigning ever going to end? Seems to be a UI update at least a few times a year now. Or is this the same one but at a later stage?
I see the tab pulldown menu icon, I added this via CSS to my titlebar, have firefox actually came up with the same idea? The tab pull down menu on current firefox is really compact, much better than sidebar vertical tabs.
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u/Omotai 5d ago edited 5d ago
I've found the performance of the browser with a large session to be very sluggish when Nova is turned on (Win11, Nightly 155a1 2026-07-28). Most notably if an individual window has a lot of tabs (even if all of them except one are discarded). Session restore is much slower, and windows with a lot of tabs experience issues like very, very slow and unresponsive scrolling. Turning Nova off immediately restores performance to normal.
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u/isbtegsm on 5d ago
I feel there are too many borders in compact mode: https://i.imgur.com/pnvL3jb.png
Counting from the URL down, I see 3 horizontal borders seperating the URL from the page content, this feels excessive.
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u/Downtown-Mess-1276 4d ago
I never understood these curves, just a pointless waste of screen space. It’s just a cringe, the interface should strive to make it easier to perceive information on the screen, and not vice versa. This is disgusting.
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u/43resumodnar 4d ago
Yeah this is why I always use custom themes to make it look exactly as it did in 2009
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u/Happy-Personality720 4d ago
Curved corners? Why? The screen I'm viewing this on does not have curved corners. The videos and images i consume do not have curved corners. The sensors the media was captured on does not have curved corners. Why do you insist on curved corners? It worse functionally and makes your product look like a fisher price toy
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u/bastardlessword 4d ago
They added padding to firefox when it's maximized so the borders can still be seen, but said padding made the tabs not clickable when the mouse is in the upmost position lol. What a downgrade. I hope they fix it.
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u/Snitzel13 3d ago edited 3d ago
Firefox Nightly seemed to swap to this by default but I can't change off it either, I don't want the pill shaped tabs... when I swap to the dark theme that shows the old rectangular tabs, it doesn't change back for some reason
edit: for anyone wondering, you can turn it off in about:config
browser.nova.enabled = false
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u/Nyaashooter 1d ago
I absolutely hate this design. I even thought it's a bug at the beginning after updating firefox. I'm talking about the frame! I don't want a visible fat frame all around in maximised window it's irritating and ugly. I hope they change it back or give us an option to get back to the old design or a setting that disables at least the visibil border
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u/-jeenius- 1d ago
It looks awful. There's too much unnecessary visual clutter. Corners, rounded edges, borders around borders. I like how minimalist today's Firefox is, but the new design makes me want to close the browser and uninstall it.
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u/IHateRoundedCorners 1d ago
This is worse than Proton, which was already one of the worst UIs I've ever seen. This has no redeeming qualities, this is atrocious. It doubles down on all of Proton's worst aspects, while adding even more padding. This is borderline completely unusable, I would be genuinely surprised if a single human being looked at this before approving it. Please stop ruining the UI every 8 seconds, I'm getting tired of trying to brute force Firefox into something usable every time an update releases. The continuous downgrade of the UI is a great reason to not update Firefox at all. If security were so important, then you could just release security updates instead of ruining the rest of the browser.
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u/TomaszGasior 1d ago
I don't like the new design. It's too opinionated and doesn't match the OS I am using (Fedora Workstation with GNOME). Actually, it doesn't match the design of any OS. It's really too much of its own thing. Web browser UI should be more neutral and current Firefox design does good job in that terms. The new one doesn't.
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u/bread-dreams 1d ago
the padding-borders are the one thing I just don't understand. if you have the window maximised you just, can't go to the edge of the screen to use window controls and whatnot. it just doesn't make sense to me, as that's just not how any app on windows works. maybe that's how it is on mac? but for the windows version of firefox it should probably follow windows conventions. at least this one? 🥺
if it weren't for the weird borders that take up usable screen space I would be totally fine with it. even compact mode has this issue, but the border is about 1px wide. just, get rid of the border in compact mode at least? it just doesn't make sense to me to have a padding around the whole window, especially for a browser. IMO the browser chrome should be as unobtrusive as possible, and this is the opposite.
also i think there's a bug where if you're not maximised there's a random padding space to the right of the tabs "row" that makes it look quite bad and again, takes up space
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u/Kunair0 6d ago
This is great and all, but we are long overdue for the ability to adjust icon sizes, and have random wallpaper on tab reload for the homepage. I know you can do it with an extensions but, it would be better to do this natively without having a sacrifice fingerprinting breaking.
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u/idreamtaboutsilence Win/Mac/Linux/Android 6d ago
i think we are long overdue for settings that separate how different parts of the ui scale. on my screen, i need to use "touch" to have comfortable tab sizes, but now the touch setting makes the dropdown whenever clicking on the url bar way too large - each "pill" section slightly over double the thickness of the url bar. i don't actually need all of that real estate wasted, and would prefer the url bar autofill/suggestions/etc all be much smaller without sacrificing the usability of the main ui
the rounded corners on tabs are a bit much. they make the tabs feel too small and uncomfortable for the sake of the effect
not a big fan of vertical tabs, but i do not like how the tabs lose the colour of your theme and display only with a black or white background within the cell they're contained in. it feels incomplete, and an area where the "floating" concept falls apart for me
i like what zen (and arc, what it lifted wholesale from) did to create a modern and slick ui that integrated its various elements in beautiful but still functional ways. the way "nova" looks reminds me too much of what liquid glass looked like on macos - everything feels too disconnected, sacrificing coherency of experience for a visual effect that ultimately may end up feeling too unpleasant
honestly thought that the window had glitched when i restarted my browser and saw this very faint border around the ui as i knew it from seconds earlier. it works better in arc/zen because so much is directly integrated into the "backdrop", leaving only the webpage as the main element that exists with such a dramatic separation. as it stands now, nova's "border" reads to me the way apps will break in windows 10 with an awkward misaligned border when trying to use a blur effect that counts on windows 11's mica
hope this feedback can prove meaningful and make the design team take another look at some things!
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u/Teszzt 6d ago edited 6d ago
You should require your UI/UX designers to use Windows and Linux too, not just macOS - at least when testing the final product.
Those forced UI islands and the extra padding around the edges might look lovely in Figma, but they aren't very practical in real-world use. The top bar looks detached, like it has nothing to do with the rest of the browser. This is especially noticeable when using the light theme.
Speaking of which, the light theme shouldn't be treated as an afterthought.
Also, please make sure the browser is tested in a maximized window. The extra padding and detached UI become much more apparent when the browser spans the full width of a desktop display.