The biggest visual change in Firefox since 2021 is now official: this is Firefox 157 with a new interface and compact mode

We already have it between us. Mozilla has finally launched Firefox 157a version that already includes activated by default the biggest redesign of the browser in years. Nova, which is what the new design line is called, had been testing for months on the Nightly channel.

However, now the update makes available to all desktop and mobile device users the aesthetic renovation known during its development under the internal Nova project. According to the company, this launch unifies the visual language on all platforms to modernize an interface that had barely received structural changes since the arrival of Proton in 2021.

For our part, we have downloaded Firefox 157 on a Mac and an iPhone. In the first, the change is evident, but in the second the same design of the previous versions is maintained.

Dear nostalgics, compact mode is back

One of the most repeated demands by the community was to recover a, so to speak, denser layout of the interface. This is mainly used to gain reading space on small monitors or simply on laptops. Well, Firefox 157 returns support to what is known as compact modewhich allows you to narrow the height of the toolbar and tabs without needing to manipulate advanced settings in about:config.

In addition, the system incorporates an automatic compaction setting designed to optimize the navigation area on screens where the diagonal is tight.

Another customization addition is the new interactive theme selector that makes it quicker to switch between color palettes, soft gradients, and illustrated backgrounds for the main window. Along these same lines, the new tab page gains operational flexibility by allowing permanent shortcuts to be pinned to the most visited websites.

These aesthetic modifications respect the performance of the Gecko engine, so they should not penalize loading times or memory consumption of the operating system.

Firefox updates with a ton of additional features

The new design supports functions that Mozilla has recently been adding to the browser. We are referring to things like the possibility of viewing two web pages in parallel within the same window. Also to the integration of your own VPNwhich offers up to 50 GB of free anonymous browsing.

Likewise, Mozilla remembers that the tracker blocking layers remain integrated to speed up the loading of content and reduce the delay in vertical scrolling.

By the way, in addition to the purely aesthetic changes, Firefox 157 also implements some technical adjustments. For example, WebRTC video calls can take advantage of hardware AV1 decoding when your device allows it. If you want to know all the ins and outs of the new version, I recommend taking a look at the notes published by Mozilla.