[Firefox Tip] Restore Classic New Tab Page in Mozilla Firefox

The new Mozilla Firefox version comes with new Photon UI which provides lots of GUI changes and a brand new “New Tab” page. The revamped “New Tab” page now comes with a new “Activity Stream” feature which is divided into following 4 parts:

• Search box
• Top websites thumbnails which you visit most.
• Highlights section which shows web pages from bookmarks and browser history.
• Snippets section which shows updates from Mozilla, Internet culture and random meme. Snippets are shown in form of a horizontal bar at the bottom of the new tab page.

If you remember, we already told you about this revamped “New Tab” page and Activity Stream feature long time back in our Nightly Updates topic when Firefox 57.0 version was under development and testing. In fact we shared a tutorial to enable the secret activity stream feature on new tab page in Firefox as it was not activated by default:

[Firefox Tip] Enable Hidden Secret Activity Stream on New Tab Page

Now the new Firefox versions already come with this redesigned “New Tab” page and activity stream feature enabled. If you don’t like the redesigned “New Tab” page and want to restore the classic “New Tab” page, this tutorial will help you.

Actually the same old trick to enable activity stream feature can be used to disable the new tab page and bring back classic “New Tab” page in Firefox newer versions.

So if you also want to get back the good ol’ “New Tab” page in Mozilla Firefox, check out following simple steps:

1. Open Mozilla Firefox and type about:config in the addressbar and press Enter. It’ll show you a warning message, click on “I accept the risk!” button.

2. Now type newtab in Search filter box and it’ll show some result in the window.

3. Double-click on browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.enabled preference and it’ll change its value to false. Alternatively, you can right-click on the preference and select Toggle option.

That’s it. Now click on new tab icon or press Ctrl+T keys together to launch new tab page and you’ll get the classic “new tab” page back.

PS: You may need to open new tab page 2 times to apply the changes.

BONUS TIP:

The redesigned “New Tab” page can also be customized to show a blank page. It provides options to remove search box, top websites thumbnails, highlights section and snippets. You just need to click on the small gear “Settings” icon present on the top-right corner of the new tab page, it opens a sidebar which allows you to show/hide all the elements on the page:

If you uncheck all the options, you’ll get a blank new tab page.

Also Check:

[Tip] Set a Blank Page as New Tab Page and Homepage in Mozilla Firefox

[Firefox Tip] Remove Firefox Icon and Let’s Get Started Tour from New Tab Page

[Firefox Tip] Enable Hidden Secret Compact New Tab Page

[Tip] How to Restore Classic UI in Mozilla Firefox (Sort of)