Firefox is bringing back a fan-favorite feature to save its controversial new look

Mozilla is officially bringing native Compact Mode back to Firefox to fix the massive empty gaps in its upcoming Nova UI redesign. The built-in toggle just appeared in the Nightly testing channel under the Appearance settings. Selecting it instantly shrinks the heavily padded borders around the tabs and address bar, giving you back your screen space.

The setting sits right inside the Window Density section. It basically functions exactly like the old compact option that Mozilla removed back in version 89. The new toggle modifies the internal density flag and pushes everything tightly together to give you back a little more screen space.

You can now easily switch between standard and compact modes depending on your screen size. The developers are clearly acknowledging that huge padded buttons bother productivity users. Here’s a comparison between standard and compact mode:

Brave recently added a similar compact toggle to its own browser with a recent Nightly build to appease power users who want maximum room for web pages.

That said, this comes at the same time as reports surfaced that Firefox is bleeding millions of users. Though, things aren’t aren’t as bad as reported painted it out to be. We covered all the details here. Still, early previews of the new Nova interface went live recently ago, and many long-time fans hated it. The finished design features pill-shaped tabs that push web content further down the page.

Impatient users actually refused to wait for the official fix. They built custom code to strip away the heavily rounded corners themselves. Applying the fix requires users to modify their internal browser files manually. You first have to enable custom stylesheets by changing a legacy preference in the advanced configuration menu. You then create a new chrome folder inside your active Firefox profile directory and drop a text file named userChrome.css inside it. People on the Firefox CSS subreddit spent the last few days sharing the exact scripts needed to make the browser look normal again.

One user named Zonnev found a very short variable to remove the bubbled look. They posted this single line of code to flatten the design.

CSS — userChrome.css
Copy

:root { --chrome-block-radius: 0px !important; }

Another user named Jay33721 experimented further and provided a slightly more comprehensive fix. This version removes the window gaps and strips the borders from the main browser container completely.

CSS — userChrome.css
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:root {
  --chrome-window-gap: 0px !important;
  --chrome-block-radius: 0px !important;
  --chrome-content-separator-color: transparent !important;
}

.chrome-block {
  border: 0px !important;
}

.browserContainer {
  border: 0px !important;
}

You just paste that text into your stylesheet and restart the browser to see the flat tabs return. The official 2026 roadmap promises several massive updates including native tab groups. Giving users an easy way to shrink the new rounded design natively might be the smartest thing Mozilla has done all year.

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