OMFG! Look at the massive amount of space between the stupid pill shaped tabs - this is the exact opposite of what I want as a tab hoarder! If I wanted to use a shitty safari UI that sacrifices usability for cutesy looks, I would use Safari.
I am still having to use an extension (Sidebery) because Firefox failed to implement vertical tabs half as good. On my MBP, I have two rows of small panel icons to switch between 2 rows of 8 different categories of tabs (16 panels). Below that, I have 3 rows of pinned tabs on each panel (24 pinned tabs). Below that, I can see 24 open tabs without scrolling. That's 48 visible tabs per panel and with a single panel click, I can see a different set of 48 tabs. That makes a total of 768 tabs accessible via a single click. [edit] I should add that I can see 32 characters of the tab title so it is easy to know at a glance what the tab is about. [/edit] Now that is an amazing UI/UX - not some designer pill shaped tabs (that Safari has had for years).
Mozilla: why in the hell do I need to trust some extension builder to give me an amazing UI/UX? Instead of copying Apple's bad decisions - innovate!
p.s. I don't get why in the hell anyone who has more than 10 tabs open at once isn't using vertical tabs? Especially when most monitors have more horizontal pixels than vertical.
Sideberry is GOAT, nothing can beat its flexibility.
I wouldn’t really expect base experience to match what it offers, so as long as Firefox doesn’t break extensions for power users, I am more than happy to see them experimenting with stuff that could help to win back some of the audience.
> so as long as Firefox doesn’t break extensions for power users
You mean, as long as they don't break them any more than they did a few years back? Yes, I'm still salty about that loss.
But to your point, I agree with you. The native Firefox UI hasn't been one I loved for many years, and isn't getting any better. But I am still able to (mostly) massage it into something I'm OK with. As long as I can do that, then I'm fine with them doing whatever they need to do with the default look-and-feel.
I don't buy that. I would guess there are plenty of "joe/jane users" that are tab hoarding using horizontal tabs because they don't know better. Since Sidebery already built it, it would be reasonably easy for mozilla to implement a vertical tabs solution that matches its functionality and would seem innovative as hell to joe/jane. Instead, they decide to copy Apple's bad UI/UX.
Setting my browser up the way I did was a serious PITA and it didn't have to be.
It really bugs me that the tabs now look identical to their text input fields. If I go the homepage I see a rounded pill shaped search input field- then above that is the browsers rounded pill shaped address bar input field, and above that a rounded pill shaped tab.
>I don't get why in the hell anyone who has more than 10 tabs open at once isn't using vertical tabs?
If it was up to me, I would get Mozilla to hire the author of Tab Mix Plus and to fold that project directly into Firefox.
The only reason why I am running with vertical tabs is because I am running natively-vertical EIZO monitors that are 2k, so I have enough horizontal space to throw up most websites.
{Adding to my above discussion}
I installed the update on another macbook that's not my daily driver and browser.nova.enabled defaulted to false. Maybe because I have Sidebery? I switched to true and it didn't mess anything up, just added some strange minimal rounding to things. Whew. Keeping it off, but relieved that I can update the SW...
Sidebery user as well for the same reason. I never thought Firefox's design was ugly or that it needed improvements. As long as the sites are rendered properly, there is little to no reason to contemplate browser's design as long as it doesn't actively impede browsing.
The UI was tidy and nearly perfect, now it's all over the place: weird paddings, different border radiuses even within a single element, clashing background colors, and boy, do I love rainbow gradients everywhere.
Update: for those unhappy with the changes, you can roll them back for now:
Thanks for the config. To their credit the UI change is instant. I double clicked a few times to find out why the old UI looks better.
The old UI has less visual noise (at least dark mode on Windows). The new theme has random highlights and high-contrast lines everywhere that draw attention to the browser UI. I want the browser to fade into the background not stand out.
You can browse the Themes to try to find one you like better. But yeah it'd be nice if one of the default built-in themes was super plain. Closest they have available by default is a grayscale gradient ("Ash").
A bit late to the party, but this is how I turned off the gradient...
If your menu bar is hidden: Hamburger icon in top right hand corner > Original profile (or whatever profile is listed there) > Edit this profile > Choose a theme other than System.
If using the menu bar: Profiles > Manager Profiles > Click the pencil icon on Original profile > Choose a theme other than System.
Who says they don't? They've pushed 23 new releases since 2025 with thousands of updates that include exactly the bug fixes, performance improvements and security fixes you're talking baout. This latest release, v157, includes the built in dark mode you're asking about (I just saw it on the popup on first launch when installing this new version) and the release notes describe improvements to tabs. v156 included huge performance improvements and they're regularly pushing tons of CSS updates across practically all of the releases.
I don't understand why people claim these things aren't happening when they're regularly documented on their release notes page.
Yup. They can only offer limited built-in protection due to their revenue source, but important to note that unlike Chrome they don't dictate on what extensions can offer.
So they are practically speaking the only game in town (Brave being the exception on Chrome as they are keeping support for UBlock Origin)
Firefox Nightly on Android also allows desktop extensions to be used.
Right, I had an option to choose it (I think I chose device default, though I'm not exactly sure what it means on Windows but I assume it's like "system theme" on Android).
The whiplash from seeing that selectable on my screen to seeing someone claim it's not there in the same 60 seconds is really something.
Yes, I could have been more precise. It has a poor dark mode implementation that doesn’t allow per-page toggling (unless I’m missing something). A lot of the things I mentioned are half baked. In my opinion, properly building those features should be higher priority than the bi-annual theme update.
I daily drive multiple Apple products, but this is one of those things where I disagree with Cupertino. I find that pill-tabs are bad design and that the way they mesh with Liquid Glass is strange. Tabs should look like tabs.
I think that's exactly why I'm having a negative reaction to the redesign as well. I'm expecting page tabs, not pills. I'm also finding the excessive roundness terrible.
Of course, I'm on Windows, where it doesn't make any sense to incorporate Apple's Liquid Glass design guidelines. When I do want an Apple-like interface, I'd rather have something from the 10.11 - 10.15 vintage please. I wouldn't mind if there was a clearer option to switch back, but I'm not seeing that in the Appearances preferences.
Weirdly, I like the new redesign. I have vertical tabs on, a lot (lot) of tabs, some grouped and some in different containers. The new style makes all this easy to see, it was very crowded and indistinct before.
Out of curiosity, if you use the split view, why? I never understood what it can do that my window manager cannot, but maybe I am overlooking something?
I do it sometimes for highly related work (referencing on tab against the other) that will be a longer running task (30+ minutes).
It means that both tabs get maximized and minimized at the same time, and the two tabs are always side by side. Which means if I need to jump to another task, like answering a message or joining a video call, I can get back to my work faster. It’s a small thing that helps with context switching.
I do it when I consider both side of the Split View one unified context I am working on. I do it not only with browser tabs, but sometimes terminal tabs. I most commonly do it with IDE tabs.
I don’t use split view much, but I can understand the appeal.
It makes a lot of sense if one uses subject-based browser windows (e.g. 1 window == 1 subject); it keeps all tab organization within the browser and makes it easy to minimize it, move it to different screens/desktops, save/restore it, etc consistently with less overhead (no secondary organization system [such as that of the window manager] involved).
This becomes even more valuable for cross-platform users who sync and can’t rely on their favorite uberleet-haxor-wm package being available everywhere.
I suppose that depends what your window manager is and how it's configured? Most don't have an easy way to lock two windows together as they are moved as one though - especially on corporate devices.
Practically, it's most useful when I have two references for the same thing I want to move together as I work on that thing. E.g. Jira + Functional Spec as I do things related to them.
The big selling point is that everything stays in the same window.
- The split view is a special looking tab you can come too easily.
- You can have several split views in the same window.
- Selecting what tab you want in the split view is much cleaner than tearing off tabs into windows.
- No conceptual switch between "tab" and "window".
I use a tiling wm, but the split view is more compact because it doesnt have two (vertical) tab bars. Useful on a cramped laptop, less so on a large screen
I think the key here is that split view makes one tab show two sites. So when you switch the tab, you switch both views at the same time. You can't achieve this with a window manager, unless you already (instead of tabs) used only windows that your window manager rendered as tabs, and then comes also with this feature. Does any?
For a non technical user it is much easier to right click a link (for example a reference in a news article) and choose Split View than arrange two windows (which may involve 2 different monitors).
For a Teams/Zoom screen where you are sharing only one app rather than whole desktop, again split may help.
Also good for mental switching, as you can open a link to the side and either promote to it's own tab/close and carry on with same page rather than have it open separately and break the flow
I gave it a few minutes of trial and then disabled it.
With memory prices increasing, many people unable to afford new machines, and web browsers being one of those things that can potentially take a lot of system resources, I wish the Firefox team would prioritize CPU and memory performance of the core engine for users with lots of tabs.
I have stuff like 'Auto tab discard' installed but it seems to break other things, like 'Close Duplicate Tabs'.
Lol, there's enough people out there with hundreds of tabs open that there's clearly a real usecase for it, but I have just never understood this usage model. Feels to me like complaining you get bad gas mileage in your car because you're carrying around 15 years' worth of discarded McDonald's wrappers. The car isn't the problem! :)
I usually try to keep an open mind but wow this is so bad. I was a loyal Firefox user but between the memory and perf issues and now this, I've now switched to Helium. I miss the "Multi-Account Containers" but that's about it.
They just had to look at Arc for what people want out of the future of browser design and instead they committed this own goal.
HN really does kill the joy of open source announcements. This is cool news, the redesign looks great (it made me reinstall Firefox after years of using Safari and Arc) and I like it. Yet look at the comments. I don't understand why people bother posting when they clearly seem to hate whatever Mozilla does
I agree this is the first FF redesign I really like. I don't use vanilla firefox tabs so I understand that I'm not in the best place to critique them but if anything they seem more compact than the previous default.
I use Safari and Arc because they’re both innovative in ways that’s not matched by open source counterparts.
I tried ditching Arc for Zen, but it just doesn’t have the same level of polish. It feels like a copycat, which it is. I hope it gets better with time so that I can switch to it some day but it’s not there yet. They should be able to match Arc though since it’s development is stopped.
I use Safari because it syncs well between macOS and iOS and I like how Apple has been experimenting with it for the past years (since iOS 21 iirc). They try new stuff with the UI and it works for me.
Seriously, are you proud of the new look? SHOW IT TO ME. Even the video was mostly themed mock-ups that didn't show what the actual design looks like. Just post a screenshot of the whole browser.
Surprised at all the negative comments here. I'm on macOS, using vertical tabs with a default theme and the UI is clean and just gets out of my way. Been very happy with Firefox since I switched a few months ago.
This is horrible. I still can't find out how to disable the new border radius. The compact option kind of saves it but this is absolutely horrible.
Are they forcing this? You have got to be kidding me. Why force a change like this instead of adding this as an additional UI customization feature? Why is this happening? Is this making them money or is this to cater to the ego of some product manager?
The "Ash" theme saves the theme for me. The sidebar is easily disabled by clicking the settings icon on the bottom of the sidebar and selecting the easily spottable option. I cannot find how to disable this border radius. "about:config -> browser.nova.enabled -> false" only slightly fixes it, does not disable it.
I can't believe they're forcing these pills. What a fucking hostile, brazen change. Yeah, fuck you too Mozilla. Looks like I can't do anything about it! You punked me!
Turd polishing. It's easier than doing real work fixing and improving the browser. This exact scenario has happened countless times before, and it will keep happening. Mozilla "reimagines" their UI. There's huge controversy. Userchrome.css files gets published on github and then abandoned. Bugzilla reports are created and locked for being toxic (ie. disagreeing). /r/firefox mods work double shifts to silence dissent. HN has a >1000 comment argument. Some percentage of users flee to Brave/Vivaldi/etc., while the rest settle in to their stockholm syndrome.
Meanwhile, support for Firefox from web developers seems to keep on sliding.
Whenever I have to fill out a new web form on a random site, there is about 50% chance that it will break. Regrettably and unsurprisingly, they do work perfectly in Chrome-based browsers.
I don't have a case right now. I usually report such problems to site maintainers while I'm at it.
But your comment motivated me to discover the "hamburger" > "Help and Report" > "Report Broken Site" menu. Will use it next time I come across a broken form.
Redesign for the sake of the redesign, I am using Vivaldi on desktop as daily driver, tried updating Firefox, after update received some gayish pink browser, which I resolved by installing Dark theme for firefox (I don't want dark pages), not really optimal since I would prefer the current tab highlighted in white, the density can be resolved by using Compact setting, but still dunno:
1. how to have rectangular tabs instead of pills - solved with gemini by creating css with content:
2. how to have tabs touching the top of the window so I can easily switch between them by having cursor on top of the screen since there is gap between top of the window border and tab border - tried removing gap with script, but seems the best working solution is moving window up off the screen a bit to achieve desired result
3. how to hide close tab button and close it with double click
4. and I need to install gesture control, can't imagine anymore using desktop browser without mouse gestures (left to go back, down to close the window) - Gesturefy seems OK, though it doesn't work in settings and firefox pages like extensions etc.
I struggle to use UIs like in the image shown under "Compact Mode". I can't tell what is/isn't clickable, since there are no bevels or other visual indicators (maybe something changes on mouse-over? but that's too late to indicate that I should try mousing-over!)
Thankfully user-chrome still seems to work, so these things can be overridden (and LLMs make those overrides easier to write & maintain).
I use multiple Firefox profiles because I have a couple of websites for work that seem to wind up with issues loading every few months, and for some reason keeping those sites in their own profile keeps that from happening. I use Firefox Sync to keep things in sync between the two.
Anyway, I've had a different theme for each profile for a couple of years so I can tell them apart at a glance. My main profile is dark gray, and the other profile is green. With this new update, now the themes keep syncing and winding up the same. I tried changing the sync.prefs for all of the activeThemeID keys to false in both profiles, but the themes keep syncing up. Either that, or the themes keep getting reset back to the default theme, which I'm not using for either one.
This is the most diabolical fuckass looking thing I've ever seen. Imagine waking up to this shit autoinstalling itself with no straightforwardly obvious way to disable it.
Hey Mozilla - I have transparency and color tinting disabled in Windows. What the fuck are you doing? Literally everybody who signed off on this UI redesign should resign and leave software development, it ain't for you. And the rest of your employees should get tested for lead poisoning, something isn't right around there.
about:config
search nova and disable this shit. Fire these people into the sun.
Firefox needs to start adding actual embedded functionality improvements rather than constantly tweaking the UX. Chrome's integration with Googgle Pay for example (which lets you generate virtual card numbers on the fly) is what allowed Capital One to replace their browser agnostic extension. Now I cannot use Capital One virtual card number generator in my checkout workflow if I don't move to Chrome.
It's edge case, but I think it's an example of how Firefox is not keeping up with demand for more functionality. Firefox is slowly becoming obselete and Mozilla won't acknowledge it.
This caused me to check how many tabs I have open and it is 2338, I think I have a problem - and the new tab design does make it worse for me, but I believe it will grow on me, seems positive
I like the idea of Firefox, but the UI has always been awkward on macOS. It looks a little better, but I don't like the huge tab pills in the window header, or the popups if you linger for more than a moment on the tab pill or favorites.
Ooof, it's definitely not just you. I definitely root for Mozilla to succeed and think they're critical in the grand scheme of the browser wars, but that video is rough. It's practically Cocomelon.
They’ve done this so many times I’m just numb to it. These designs aren’t how I use a browser. The existing UI required no work, it was fine.
Vertical tabs are the dumbest thing they are wasting effort on. That firmly belongs as an extension, not a browser feature. Same problem as Pocket and the VPN garbage.
I disagree. When done right, tab management can make or break the browser. Extensions can't do all the things a native UI can. See Arc for example. Aside from amazing tab management story that made it hugely popular, it was a pretty uninspiring Chrome clone overall.
I'm currently using Zen since it's the closest thing to Arc with full MV2 support. If native Firefox with the new UI can do what Arc/Zen can do, I'll switch to it probably.
Try out the Compact UI mode (Settings -> Appearance -> Window Density), which I didn't know about until I read this blog post. Tightens things up nicely.
FF has been my primary browser for 20 years. But in the past 6 months it spawns so many FF processes from a single web page with advertising like yahoo - 60 FF processes or more - that it's unusable. The X button to stop it doesn't work, and going to another website can take upwards of 10 seconds. I am looking for an another browser.
And it again sucks... Seriously, one day there should be a documentation about the delusion or corruption that has to happen with Mozilla's designer-teams. For decades now they regularly make things worse again and again, break things and annoy users. Not to mention all those pointless garbage-projects, like those personas-stuff, or the renamed personas, or the new type of themes, or the other new type of themes...
Zen (and Arc) are much more than just vertical tabs. Native, neatly integrated support for vertical tabs is amazing and a step in the right direction but it's far from Arc in terms of usability, the main missing thing being the lack of "spaces" (ie. in the vertical sidebar you can swipe left/right to get a different space of tabs with different bookmarks)
OMFG! Look at the massive amount of space between the stupid pill shaped tabs - this is the exact opposite of what I want as a tab hoarder! If I wanted to use a shitty safari UI that sacrifices usability for cutesy looks, I would use Safari.
I am still having to use an extension (Sidebery) because Firefox failed to implement vertical tabs half as good. On my MBP, I have two rows of small panel icons to switch between 2 rows of 8 different categories of tabs (16 panels). Below that, I have 3 rows of pinned tabs on each panel (24 pinned tabs). Below that, I can see 24 open tabs without scrolling. That's 48 visible tabs per panel and with a single panel click, I can see a different set of 48 tabs. That makes a total of 768 tabs accessible via a single click. [edit] I should add that I can see 32 characters of the tab title so it is easy to know at a glance what the tab is about. [/edit] Now that is an amazing UI/UX - not some designer pill shaped tabs (that Safari has had for years).
Mozilla: why in the hell do I need to trust some extension builder to give me an amazing UI/UX? Instead of copying Apple's bad decisions - innovate!
p.s. I don't get why in the hell anyone who has more than 10 tabs open at once isn't using vertical tabs? Especially when most monitors have more horizontal pixels than vertical.
Sideberry is GOAT, nothing can beat its flexibility.
I wouldn’t really expect base experience to match what it offers, so as long as Firefox doesn’t break extensions for power users, I am more than happy to see them experimenting with stuff that could help to win back some of the audience.
> so as long as Firefox doesn’t break extensions for power users
You mean, as long as they don't break them any more than they did a few years back? Yes, I'm still salty about that loss.
But to your point, I agree with you. The native Firefox UI hasn't been one I loved for many years, and isn't getting any better. But I am still able to (mostly) massage it into something I'm OK with. As long as I can do that, then I'm fine with them doing whatever they need to do with the default look-and-feel.
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> Mozilla: why in the hell do I need to trust some extension builder to give me an amazing UI/UX?
Because Mozilla is basically owned by Google, neither of them care about you or your UX, and Ladybird isn't ready yet.
> why in the hell do I need to trust some extension builder to give me an amazing UI/UX?
Because you're a "long tail case" tab user? Your case might be the poster boy for an active extension ecosystem that caters to niche needs.
I don't buy that. I would guess there are plenty of "joe/jane users" that are tab hoarding using horizontal tabs because they don't know better. Since Sidebery already built it, it would be reasonably easy for mozilla to implement a vertical tabs solution that matches its functionality and would seem innovative as hell to joe/jane. Instead, they decide to copy Apple's bad UI/UX.
Setting my browser up the way I did was a serious PITA and it didn't have to be.
It's firefox. All of us are "long tail case" users. Normal people use Chrome
It really bugs me that the tabs now look identical to their text input fields. If I go the homepage I see a rounded pill shaped search input field- then above that is the browsers rounded pill shaped address bar input field, and above that a rounded pill shaped tab.
... do you really get confused between a tab and an input? Come on, be real.
>I don't get why in the hell anyone who has more than 10 tabs open at once isn't using vertical tabs?
If it was up to me, I would get Mozilla to hire the author of Tab Mix Plus and to fold that project directly into Firefox.
The only reason why I am running with vertical tabs is because I am running natively-vertical EIZO monitors that are 2k, so I have enough horizontal space to throw up most websites.
{Adding to my above discussion} I installed the update on another macbook that's not my daily driver and browser.nova.enabled defaulted to false. Maybe because I have Sidebery? I switched to true and it didn't mess anything up, just added some strange minimal rounding to things. Whew. Keeping it off, but relieved that I can update the SW...
Sidebery user as well for the same reason. I never thought Firefox's design was ugly or that it needed improvements. As long as the sites are rendered properly, there is little to no reason to contemplate browser's design as long as it doesn't actively impede browsing.
The UI was tidy and nearly perfect, now it's all over the place: weird paddings, different border radiuses even within a single element, clashing background colors, and boy, do I love rainbow gradients everywhere.
Update: for those unhappy with the changes, you can roll them back for now:
Thanks for the config. To their credit the UI change is instant. I double clicked a few times to find out why the old UI looks better.
The old UI has less visual noise (at least dark mode on Windows). The new theme has random highlights and high-contrast lines everywhere that draw attention to the browser UI. I want the browser to fade into the background not stand out.
You can remove the brightly colored (at least in dark mode) lines above every tab in your userChrome.css with:
``` .tab-context-line { display: none; } ```
I'm glad we can roll it back, but wonder how long that will be the case.
End of next month.
I cannot find a setting to disable the gradient. It's very annoying indeed.
You can browse the Themes to try to find one you like better. But yeah it'd be nice if one of the default built-in themes was super plain. Closest they have available by default is a grayscale gradient ("Ash").
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Here you go: add this to your userChrome.css file.
/disable gradient
/ 1. Remove the toolbar/tab bar gradient completely /
:root:not([theme-image-in-toolbox]) body,
:root[theme-image-in-toolbox] #navigator-toolbox {
}
/ 2. Strip Nova purple accent color/focus outlines from the URL & search bar */
:root {
}
.urlbar-input-container, #searchbar {
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The gradient is part of the theme. Updated the post with how to roll back the UI changes for now. After rolling back, select an old theme.
A bit late to the party, but this is how I turned off the gradient...
If your menu bar is hidden: Hamburger icon in top right hand corner > Original profile (or whatever profile is listed there) > Edit this profile > Choose a theme other than System.
If using the menu bar: Profiles > Manager Profiles > Click the pencil icon on Original profile > Choose a theme other than System.
I just turned off auto-updates after reading this. Safe for now.
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And, adding this to userChrome.css removes all rounded corners
Thanks, that’s a hot tip. How long until it’s mandatory though, I’m wondering.
OMG, thank you so much, I was getting super irritated by the new design which I didn't ask for.
I wish Firefox would stop rolling out redesigns, color themes, and other visual tweaks every couple years and instead focus on features and bugs.
Improve Adblock capabilities, better tab and session management, improve sync, improve site css and js management, built in dark-mode.
Hell, just look at the list of most used extensions, it’s a great place to start understanding what users want.
>and instead focus on features and bugs
Who says they don't? They've pushed 23 new releases since 2025 with thousands of updates that include exactly the bug fixes, performance improvements and security fixes you're talking baout. This latest release, v157, includes the built in dark mode you're asking about (I just saw it on the popup on first launch when installing this new version) and the release notes describe improvements to tabs. v156 included huge performance improvements and they're regularly pushing tons of CSS updates across practically all of the releases.
I don't understand why people claim these things aren't happening when they're regularly documented on their release notes page.
The release notes do claim improvements to tabs but that is absolutely not the case
It's because they don't see bugfixes. They only see bugs.
Like how I can't scroll on youtube anymore...
They should also improve the bookmarks and history UI, it's unusable. They redesigned the history sidebar now and it takes a lot longer to show up...
The Add Bookmark popup is so small and cramped trying to choose which folder to place the new bookmark.
they can't focus on adblock because most of their money comes from google
Yup. They can only offer limited built-in protection due to their revenue source, but important to note that unlike Chrome they don't dictate on what extensions can offer.
So they are practically speaking the only game in town (Brave being the exception on Chrome as they are keeping support for UBlock Origin)
Firefox Nightly on Android also allows desktop extensions to be used.
> built in dark-mode
It has built-in dark mode, check out the Themes in your settings.
Right, I had an option to choose it (I think I chose device default, though I'm not exactly sure what it means on Windows but I assume it's like "system theme" on Android).
The whiplash from seeing that selectable on my screen to seeing someone claim it's not there in the same 60 seconds is really something.
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Yes, I could have been more precise. It has a poor dark mode implementation that doesn’t allow per-page toggling (unless I’m missing something). A lot of the things I mentioned are half baked. In my opinion, properly building those features should be higher priority than the bi-annual theme update.
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A lot of what you are asking for is already there.
I want the page headings to look like tabs, not pills. You don't have to be different for the sake of it
It's not different, it's just what Apple is doing (Safari uses pills).
In fact, I propose that all computer User Interface design proceeds as:
Where c is some constant, A is what Apple is doing and N is random noise.
I daily drive multiple Apple products, but this is one of those things where I disagree with Cupertino. I find that pill-tabs are bad design and that the way they mesh with Liquid Glass is strange. Tabs should look like tabs.
Safari does almost everything wrong. They’re not a good role model.
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I think that's exactly why I'm having a negative reaction to the redesign as well. I'm expecting page tabs, not pills. I'm also finding the excessive roundness terrible.
Of course, I'm on Windows, where it doesn't make any sense to incorporate Apple's Liquid Glass design guidelines. When I do want an Apple-like interface, I'd rather have something from the 10.11 - 10.15 vintage please. I wouldn't mind if there was a clearer option to switch back, but I'm not seeing that in the Appearances preferences.
Let me guess: even more whitespace, hiding stuff for a "clean" look like a baby toy.
Weirdly, I like the new redesign. I have vertical tabs on, a lot (lot) of tabs, some grouped and some in different containers. The new style makes all this easy to see, it was very crowded and indistinct before.
Out of curiosity, if you use the split view, why? I never understood what it can do that my window manager cannot, but maybe I am overlooking something?
I do it sometimes for highly related work (referencing on tab against the other) that will be a longer running task (30+ minutes).
It means that both tabs get maximized and minimized at the same time, and the two tabs are always side by side. Which means if I need to jump to another task, like answering a message or joining a video call, I can get back to my work faster. It’s a small thing that helps with context switching.
I do it when I consider both side of the Split View one unified context I am working on. I do it not only with browser tabs, but sometimes terminal tabs. I most commonly do it with IDE tabs.
I don’t use split view much, but I can understand the appeal.
It makes a lot of sense if one uses subject-based browser windows (e.g. 1 window == 1 subject); it keeps all tab organization within the browser and makes it easy to minimize it, move it to different screens/desktops, save/restore it, etc consistently with less overhead (no secondary organization system [such as that of the window manager] involved).
This becomes even more valuable for cross-platform users who sync and can’t rely on their favorite uberleet-haxor-wm package being available everywhere.
I suppose that depends what your window manager is and how it's configured? Most don't have an easy way to lock two windows together as they are moved as one though - especially on corporate devices.
Practically, it's most useful when I have two references for the same thing I want to move together as I work on that thing. E.g. Jira + Functional Spec as I do things related to them.
Sometimes is just nice to have a tab related to an activity, which might involve having two web sites open
Every 15 years, MDI gets re-discovered and then deprecated.
The big selling point is that everything stays in the same window.
- The split view is a special looking tab you can come too easily. - You can have several split views in the same window. - Selecting what tab you want in the split view is much cleaner than tearing off tabs into windows. - No conceptual switch between "tab" and "window".
I use a tiling wm, but the split view is more compact because it doesnt have two (vertical) tab bars. Useful on a cramped laptop, less so on a large screen
I think the key here is that split view makes one tab show two sites. So when you switch the tab, you switch both views at the same time. You can't achieve this with a window manager, unless you already (instead of tabs) used only windows that your window manager rendered as tabs, and then comes also with this feature. Does any?
Well, for one I use it to watch two videos at the same time.
Because I want a split view of 2 tabs, not 2 windows. The 2 tabs go together but they don't go with other tabs
Because I want two tabs next to each other, but not two windows?
Convenience.
For a non technical user it is much easier to right click a link (for example a reference in a news article) and choose Split View than arrange two windows (which may involve 2 different monitors).
For a Teams/Zoom screen where you are sharing only one app rather than whole desktop, again split may help.
Also good for mental switching, as you can open a link to the side and either promote to it's own tab/close and carry on with same page rather than have it open separately and break the flow
It's just another tool.
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I gave it a few minutes of trial and then disabled it.
With memory prices increasing, many people unable to afford new machines, and web browsers being one of those things that can potentially take a lot of system resources, I wish the Firefox team would prioritize CPU and memory performance of the core engine for users with lots of tabs.
I have stuff like 'Auto tab discard' installed but it seems to break other things, like 'Close Duplicate Tabs'.
so sad you have to use the surveillance enabled chrome browser now, I feel so sorry for you
Don't feel sad or sorry :) There are other options, like Orion that runs uBo just fine. I haven't used it enough to say either way though.
768 tabs open. Total suspender works great.
Lol, there's enough people out there with hundreds of tabs open that there's clearly a real usecase for it, but I have just never understood this usage model. Feels to me like complaining you get bad gas mileage in your car because you're carrying around 15 years' worth of discarded McDonald's wrappers. The car isn't the problem! :)
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I usually try to keep an open mind but wow this is so bad. I was a loyal Firefox user but between the memory and perf issues and now this, I've now switched to Helium. I miss the "Multi-Account Containers" but that's about it.
They just had to look at Arc for what people want out of the future of browser design and instead they committed this own goal.
HN really does kill the joy of open source announcements. This is cool news, the redesign looks great (it made me reinstall Firefox after years of using Safari and Arc) and I like it. Yet look at the comments. I don't understand why people bother posting when they clearly seem to hate whatever Mozilla does
> I don't understand why people bother posting when they clearly seem to hate whatever Mozilla does
Because they want Mozilla to do better. To them, Firefox is the least bad option, and it is seemingly growing worse.
The "perfect is the enemy of good" guys really come out of the woodwork for every Firefox announcement.
I agree this is the first FF redesign I really like. I don't use vanilla firefox tabs so I understand that I'm not in the best place to critique them but if anything they seem more compact than the previous default.
Why would anyone use a proprietary browser in 2026?
I use Safari and Arc because they’re both innovative in ways that’s not matched by open source counterparts.
I tried ditching Arc for Zen, but it just doesn’t have the same level of polish. It feels like a copycat, which it is. I hope it gets better with time so that I can switch to it some day but it’s not there yet. They should be able to match Arc though since it’s development is stopped.
I use Safari because it syncs well between macOS and iOS and I like how Apple has been experimenting with it for the past years (since iOS 21 iirc). They try new stuff with the UI and it works for me.
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Remarkably few images of design on this page about design. No I'm not going to watch a video.
Seriously, are you proud of the new look? SHOW IT TO ME. Even the video was mostly themed mock-ups that didn't show what the actual design looks like. Just post a screenshot of the whole browser.
Most of them are creative renderings too, not actual screenshots.
Besides the fake macOS window controls for some renderings, I don’t see how one would close, minimize, or zoom windows with this new design.
There are remarkably few examples in the video as well
Surprised at all the negative comments here. I'm on macOS, using vertical tabs with a default theme and the UI is clean and just gets out of my way. Been very happy with Firefox since I switched a few months ago.
Same. Maybe it's made for macOS users, and Linux/Windows users will hate it on principle
I use linux/Gnome and it feels more in-line with the Adwaita design than the previous design. I'm happy with the update as well.
This is horrible. I still can't find out how to disable the new border radius. The compact option kind of saves it but this is absolutely horrible.
Are they forcing this? You have got to be kidding me. Why force a change like this instead of adding this as an additional UI customization feature? Why is this happening? Is this making them money or is this to cater to the ego of some product manager?
The "Ash" theme saves the theme for me. The sidebar is easily disabled by clicking the settings icon on the bottom of the sidebar and selecting the easily spottable option. I cannot find how to disable this border radius. "about:config -> browser.nova.enabled -> false" only slightly fixes it, does not disable it.
I can't believe they're forcing these pills. What a fucking hostile, brazen change. Yeah, fuck you too Mozilla. Looks like I can't do anything about it! You punked me!
No one in the Firefox forums are happy either. A majority of the comments simply request to make the UI changes optional:
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/the-new-firefox-d...
Now, will Mozilla listen to this overwhelming amount of feedback? Or smugly ignore it.
EDIT: I found a combination that seriously helps. Commenting top-level with the solution.
>Why is this happening?
Turd polishing. It's easier than doing real work fixing and improving the browser. This exact scenario has happened countless times before, and it will keep happening. Mozilla "reimagines" their UI. There's huge controversy. Userchrome.css files gets published on github and then abandoned. Bugzilla reports are created and locked for being toxic (ie. disagreeing). /r/firefox mods work double shifts to silence dissent. HN has a >1000 comment argument. Some percentage of users flee to Brave/Vivaldi/etc., while the rest settle in to their stockholm syndrome.
v89 was when I got out.
iOS, macOS, android and GNOME have massively increased corner radiuses over the last couple of years, so it must be good, right?
If you find a solution to this, please come back and post.
Meanwhile, support for Firefox from web developers seems to keep on sliding.
Whenever I have to fill out a new web form on a random site, there is about 50% chance that it will break. Regrettably and unsurprisingly, they do work perfectly in Chrome-based browsers.
Can you provide an example? I don't think I've ever encountered this, I'd be curious to see what it's like.
Firefox would probably be interested in a report if you have an example of it: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/report-breakage-due-blo...
I don't have a case right now. I usually report such problems to site maintainers while I'm at it.
But your comment motivated me to discover the "hamburger" > "Help and Report" > "Report Broken Site" menu. Will use it next time I come across a broken form.
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I think this is the first Firefox redesign that I actually dislike.
Why is every border completely rounded?, on the tab bar it's almost touching the favicon, with container groups it looks even more busy.
At least the colors for the tab groups are better than before.
Finally, the one thing users have been asking for! The N+1 Firefox redesign!
Redesign for the sake of the redesign, I am using Vivaldi on desktop as daily driver, tried updating Firefox, after update received some gayish pink browser, which I resolved by installing Dark theme for firefox (I don't want dark pages), not really optimal since I would prefer the current tab highlighted in white, the density can be resolved by using Compact setting, but still dunno:
1. how to have rectangular tabs instead of pills - solved with gemini by creating css with content:
/* Square Firefox tabs */ .tabbrowser-tab, .tab-background { border-radius: 0 !important; } .tabbrowser-tab[selected="true"], .tab-background[selected="true"] { border-radius: 0 !important; }
2. how to have tabs touching the top of the window so I can easily switch between them by having cursor on top of the screen since there is gap between top of the window border and tab border - tried removing gap with script, but seems the best working solution is moving window up off the screen a bit to achieve desired result
3. how to hide close tab button and close it with double click
4. and I need to install gesture control, can't imagine anymore using desktop browser without mouse gestures (left to go back, down to close the window) - Gesturefy seems OK, though it doesn't work in settings and firefox pages like extensions etc.
I struggle to use UIs like in the image shown under "Compact Mode". I can't tell what is/isn't clickable, since there are no bevels or other visual indicators (maybe something changes on mouse-over? but that's too late to indicate that I should try mousing-over!)
Thankfully user-chrome still seems to work, so these things can be overridden (and LLMs make those overrides easier to write & maintain).
I use multiple Firefox profiles because I have a couple of websites for work that seem to wind up with issues loading every few months, and for some reason keeping those sites in their own profile keeps that from happening. I use Firefox Sync to keep things in sync between the two.
Anyway, I've had a different theme for each profile for a couple of years so I can tell them apart at a glance. My main profile is dark gray, and the other profile is green. With this new update, now the themes keep syncing and winding up the same. I tried changing the sync.prefs for all of the activeThemeID keys to false in both profiles, but the themes keep syncing up. Either that, or the themes keep getting reset back to the default theme, which I'm not using for either one.
Has anyone else noticed something like this?
This is the most diabolical fuckass looking thing I've ever seen. Imagine waking up to this shit autoinstalling itself with no straightforwardly obvious way to disable it.
Hey Mozilla - I have transparency and color tinting disabled in Windows. What the fuck are you doing? Literally everybody who signed off on this UI redesign should resign and leave software development, it ain't for you. And the rest of your employees should get tested for lead poisoning, something isn't right around there.
about:config
search nova and disable this shit. Fire these people into the sun.
This combination seriously helps the new update for me, but according to the Firefox forums and the comments here nothing truly reverses it:
- Disable sidebar using settings icon on the bottom of the sidebar
- Enable compact mode
- Use new Dark theme (NOT ASH)
- about:config then browser.nova.enabled -> false
Grabbin' Pills.
the ui fix still works, nice
https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix
Firefox needs to start adding actual embedded functionality improvements rather than constantly tweaking the UX. Chrome's integration with Googgle Pay for example (which lets you generate virtual card numbers on the fly) is what allowed Capital One to replace their browser agnostic extension. Now I cannot use Capital One virtual card number generator in my checkout workflow if I don't move to Chrome.
That's an edge case is it not?
99% of users don't need to generate virtual card numbers on the fly, so won't be a high priority item.
It's edge case, but I think it's an example of how Firefox is not keeping up with demand for more functionality. Firefox is slowly becoming obselete and Mozilla won't acknowledge it.
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Gradient tabs. What a nerve. You don't like put very questionable design style as default. What next. Replace favicons with flowers?
Blurry misaligned icon set.
This caused me to check how many tabs I have open and it is 2338, I think I have a problem - and the new tab design does make it worse for me, but I believe it will grow on me, seems positive
I like the idea of Firefox, but the UI has always been awkward on macOS. It looks a little better, but I don't like the huge tab pills in the window header, or the popups if you linger for more than a moment on the tab pill or favorites.
> or the popups if you linger for more than a moment on the tab pill
You can turn that off in the settings if you like. Settings -> Tabs and browsing -> Disable "Show an image preview you when you hover on a tab".
Thank you, but there's still a popup with the page title and site name.
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Is their overview video doing it for literally anyone at all? I would love to not be infantilized.
Ooof, it's definitely not just you. I definitely root for Mozilla to succeed and think they're critical in the grand scheme of the browser wars, but that video is rough. It's practically Cocomelon.
I wish the best for Mozilla.
Donate to Ladybird!
They're trying to regain mass market appeal because the only people using it now are diehard nerds, the video isn't for you
I thought it looked good, it feels polished, their mascot looks cool, and I like it when open source gives two shits about design.
They’ve done this so many times I’m just numb to it. These designs aren’t how I use a browser. The existing UI required no work, it was fine.
Vertical tabs are the dumbest thing they are wasting effort on. That firmly belongs as an extension, not a browser feature. Same problem as Pocket and the VPN garbage.
I disagree. When done right, tab management can make or break the browser. Extensions can't do all the things a native UI can. See Arc for example. Aside from amazing tab management story that made it hugely popular, it was a pretty uninspiring Chrome clone overall.
I'm currently using Zen since it's the closest thing to Arc with full MV2 support. If native Firefox with the new UI can do what Arc/Zen can do, I'll switch to it probably.
“Warm, but still precise” is an interesting goal. I wonder how much users actually feel that difference, though.
I still have hilarious memories of "aerodynamic tabs" in that era of Firefox design docs.
True
I just updated. I think it looks great overall, but there is way too much lost space on the horizontal tabs.
Try out the Compact UI mode (Settings -> Appearance -> Window Density), which I didn't know about until I read this blog post. Tightens things up nicely.
Can we stop with the 100% corner radius trend already, please? Or at least give the users the choice between childish UI and professional one?
FF has been my primary browser for 20 years. But in the past 6 months it spawns so many FF processes from a single web page with advertising like yahoo - 60 FF processes or more - that it's unusable. The X button to stop it doesn't work, and going to another website can take upwards of 10 seconds. I am looking for an another browser.
Why force these changes onto their users. I hate round corners.
Thanks, I hate it. So much space wasted on an AESTHETIC I don't want. Stop rounding everything off and using whitespace like it makes you ad money.
So tired of this infantalization of software and design these days.
Well, it is nice, but not really solving any of the Firefox real problems.
And it again sucks... Seriously, one day there should be a documentation about the delusion or corruption that has to happen with Mozilla's designer-teams. For decades now they regularly make things worse again and again, break things and annoy users. Not to mention all those pointless garbage-projects, like those personas-stuff, or the renamed personas, or the new type of themes, or the other new type of themes...
Firefox, I used to love you but you can't UX your way out of a decline.
Lots of pooh pooh, lots of blah blah, almost nothing on show.
Hey! That's essentially Zen browser's UI?
"We have Arc Browser at home".
More seriously, it's nice to see this UI finally copied by a major browser, but sad that there's still no real replacement for Arc.
Zen (and Arc) are much more than just vertical tabs. Native, neatly integrated support for vertical tabs is amazing and a step in the right direction but it's far from Arc in terms of usability, the main missing thing being the lack of "spaces" (ie. in the vertical sidebar you can swipe left/right to get a different space of tabs with different bookmarks)
As a long time Zen user should I give this redesign a try?
Answering my own question: no, they still don't have pinned tabs. Overall the new UI seems like a huge mess compared to Zen.
Which in turn is essentially the Arc browser's UI
Except Zen’s is more consistent and in my opinion, cleaner looking.
I think Firefox is doing a good job overall.
Horrid. What the hell are they doing?
I keep trying to switch from Chrome to Firefox. I had been trying pretty hard this last time but now this... >sigh<
Change for change's sake is so damn tiring.
I don't see a compact mode. Liars. Compact mode = horizontal tab bar with an integrated address bar a-la Safari, Helium, Orion.
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