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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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 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 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 windows, 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.
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 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?
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.
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.
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.
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)
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'.
The UI was tidy and nearly perfect, now it's all over the place: weird paddings, different borders radiuses even within a single element, clashing background colors, and boy, do I love rainbow gradients everywhere.
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.
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. 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.
They don't need to do anything that they have decided to do. The evidence of this is that nothing they do has led to them not shedding users. In fact, the only thing that gives them a user bump is on the rare occasions that they are allowed not to do exactly what Chrome did, such as V3 and not having AI for 5 seconds before having AI then backing away then moving forward carefully.
Firefox is the browser that intentionally destroys itself. Massaging it into something I want to use involves so many chores and so many extensions (often obsolete and unmaintained, or migrated off the main site onto github or more obscure forges) that I can't recommend it to anyone normie and my attack surface is virtually infinite.
{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...
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.
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.
>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.
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. I can't believe they're forcing these pills. What a fucking hostile, brazen change. Yeah, fuck you too Mozilla.
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.
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 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.
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.
111 comments
[ 11.1 ms ] story [ 365 ms ] threadOf 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.
Donate to Ladybird!
https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix
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.
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.
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.
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 windows, 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.
- 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".
99% of users don't need to generate virtual card numbers on the fly, so won't be a high priority item.
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.
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.
Like how I can't scroll on youtube anymore...
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'.
For those unhappy with the changes, you can roll them back for now:
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.
``` .tab-context-line, .contextual-identity-marker { display: none; } ```
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. 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.
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.
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.
They don't need to do anything that they have decided to do. The evidence of this is that nothing they do has led to them not shedding users. In fact, the only thing that gives them a user bump is on the rare occasions that they are allowed not to do exactly what Chrome did, such as V3 and not having AI for 5 seconds before having AI then backing away then moving forward carefully.
Firefox is the browser that intentionally destroys itself. Massaging it into something I want to use involves so many chores and so many extensions (often obsolete and unmaintained, or migrated off the main site onto github or more obscure forges) that I can't recommend it to anyone normie and my attack surface is virtually infinite.
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.
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.
Change for change's sake is so damn tiring.
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. I can't believe they're forcing these pills. What a fucking hostile, brazen change. Yeah, fuck you too Mozilla.
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.
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.
Thankfully user-chrome still seems to work, so these things can be overridden (and LLMs make those overrides easier to write & maintain).
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'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.