Customize New Tab Page in Mozilla Firefox, Change Background Image and Number of Rows and Columns of Tiles

If you are a Mozilla Firefox user, you might be aware of the “New Tab” page which shows your recently visited web pages as tiles in form of a 3×3 grid. Firefox allows you to delete a tile or pin a tile but no other options are provided. You can’t change background image, you can’t add new tiles, you can’t increase number of rows or columns, etc.

Today we are going to share an excellent add-on for Firefox which allows you to tweak and customize “New Tab” page in Firefox. “New Tab Tools” add-on allows you to:

  • Change New Tab page background image
  • Change tile thumbnail image
  • Increase or decrease number of rows and columns of tiles
  • Show homepage launcher at bottom which contains shortcuts to settings, add-ons, etc

Following is a preview of “New Tab” page after customizing with this add-on:

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New_Tab_Tools_Firefox_Addon.png

Its a must have extension for Firefox if you regularly use “New Tab” page to access your favorite websites. Once installed, it automatically adds the about:home (homepage) launcher at the bottom of “New Tab” page. It also adds an icon to change “New Tab” page settings at the top-right corner of the page.

Customize_Firefox_New_Tab_Page_Background_Image.png

When you click on the settings icon, you can change desired website tile’s thumbnail image. You can also force Firefox to show the complete thumbnail on tiles. You can also apply your favorite wallpaper as background image of “New Tab” page. If you wish, you can set the homepage launcher to have a darker background.

There is an extra “More options” link given at the bottom of the “New Tab” page settings sidebar. You can click on it to change some advanced settings.

Customize_Firefox_New_Tab_Page_Row_Column_Number.png

Once clicked, it opens the add-on options page where you can customize number of rows and columns showing at “New Tab” page. It allows you to decrease rows and columns number up to 1 and increase the number of rows and columns up to 10. Firefox also has a built-in tweak to change number of rows and columns in new tab page. Just enter into about:config page and change values of browser.newtabpage.rows and browser.newtabpage.columns according to your requirements. By default both are set to 3 but you can set any desired number as their values such as 5, 10, etc.

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If you don’t want to show homepage launcher on “New Tab” page, you can disable it from the add-on options page.

You can download the add-on using following link:

Download New Tab Tools Add-on for Mozilla Firefox

Thanks to our reader “Carbonize” for sharing it…

Published in: Mozilla Firefox

About the author: Vishal Gupta (also known as VG) has been awarded with Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award. He holds Masters degree in Computer Applications (MCA). He has written several tech articles for popular newspapers and magazines and has also appeared in tech shows on various TV channels.

Comments

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  1. Wow.. the addon should definitely help me. Loyal firefox user. thanks for sharing such a good addon.

  2. (QUOTE)::
    (Tuan
    This add-on doesn’t work when I open Firefox, it only work when I open new tab page.)

    LOL UH DUH! thats the whole point of a new tab customization tool. (kinda like the republican’s reality)

    Anyway thanks for the new tool.

  3. Thanks, VG for this tip. Too dumb to use ‘Stylish’, I guess! :p This is exactly what we need 😀

  4. Tuan,

    I’m not using this add on, but I do pin sites to the new tab page. To get this to open when you start firefox, go to ‘tools – options’. From there click on the ‘general’ tab. Set your homepage to ‘about:newtab’.

    When you open firefox it will display the new tab page with all of your pinned sites.

    blake

  5. I love being able to add my own wallpaper to the blank tab page. However, all of a sudden my computer stopped showing my picture of choice and only shows a blank page with the background color I chose. I have uninstalled and reinstalled to no avail. Help! How can I get my picture back?

  6. OK, so I installed this New Tab Tools thing, but now I can’t find it. Where is it? I’ve been on a wild goose chase trying to find out how to choose the image that appears when I open a new tab, and nothing I read makes any sense. It really shouldn’t be this hard. Who designed the new Firefox, an untrained monkey?

  7. Hi folks,
    I just installed this add-on to Firefox 41 running on Mac OSX (Mountain Lion) and it works really well. Thanks to AskVG for posting this article!!! 🙂 I’ve used the Galaxy background (same as my Mac OSX Desktop) and used a matching Galaxy persona/theme skin for the tab bar etc. Looks really awesome now.
    Thanks again!
    Jack (Sept 24, 2015)

  8. Turns Firefox empty tab/window background to black:
    userstyles.org/styles/18385/about-newtab-firefox-new-tab-dark-darkstate

  9. Is there a way to use this to display a custom background, and 0 tabs? The options only allow you to go as low as 1 tab. Even editing in firefox about:config, this app overrides that and displays at least 1 tab. Any way around this?

  10. may I increase number of thumbnail images, because I am thinking to more than 9 thumbnails, where is that setting option in mozilla

  11. I hope that I can define my own channels in the new tab page, so that I can classify websites into different channels and switch between channels to get the group of websites I want. It can make the page more organized, as well as add more websites in the page.

  12. This plugin is completely broken now (as of 2017). When you open a new tab, there’s a bunch of jibberish in the search bar. The webpage thumbnails do not load anymore.

  13. The photos/previews for the thumbnails only allow you to display an image from your computer…. Like, I just want my Gmail thumbnail to have the Gmail logo, Youtube, Twitter, Reddit, etc. Do I have to download all the damn pictures myself? It can’t even display a preview? Nice looking thumbnails was the reason I downloaded this extension, and it seemed like it should be an easy feature. Am I missing something?

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