Designing Firefox for the future

Summary

Crafted with care. Built for speed. Ready for what’s next. A great browser is so intuitive that you often forget you’re using it. Yet today the internet is changing faster than ever, and your browser needs to keep up. Firefox is still the only browser built for people, not platforms: independent, customizable, private and firmly in users’ control. Keeping Firefox the best browser for being online today is what motivated our recent work to update Firefox’s design and design system. We’re aiming to deliver a more cohesive foundation for Firefox: making the browser feel cleaner, warmer, faster and more adaptable. Internally, we’ve been calling this work Project Nova. The name fits: A nova can look like a new star, yet it comes from existing matter — a renewal, not a replacement. When it rolls out later this year, you can just call it Firefox. Here’s what it’s all about: Privacy at the center A good default matters. When you choose Firefox, privacy and clear data practices are there from the start. Our new design pulls privacy features forward, making it easier to find and use tools like our free, built-in VPN and private browsing. We’re also redesigning Settings so choices about your data are easier to understand and act on. That includes controls for turning off AI features entirely, plainer language throughout, as well as tuning Enhanced Tracking Protection to match your preferred balance of protection and usability. Speed you can feel Privacy and speed aren’t trade-offs. When Firefox blocks trackers, pages load faster, too. We also prioritize the most important parts of a page before the optional stuff around the edges. In the last year, we’ve improved load times for key page content by 9%. The new design can speed up your workflows, too. It’s easier to access tab groups, split view, and vertical tabs – putting these productivity features at your fingertips, but not in your face. And we’re bringing back compact mode. People told us that they missed it, and we listen...