Mozilla Releases Firefox Nova Design Update; Pixel VoLTE Woes Ease in China

In Nova, icons have been redrawn and address bar and toolbar controls have become rounder, with tabs turned into pill shapes, SSPAI reported. The default theme uses smoky purple and warm gradients, and a glow effect surrounds the selected tab. The sidebar, including the vertical tab bar, now sits visually as an extension of the toolbar, with both wrapping the webpage in rounded corners.

The design drew criticism from users who prefer stability over novelty. SSPAI noted that Firefox's interface has long oscillated between following trends and maintaining simplicity, citing previous themes: Phoenix in 2002, Strata in Firefox 4 in 2011, Australis in Firefox 29 in 2014, Photon in Firefox 57 in 2017, and Proton in Firefox 89 in 2021. Early versions of Nova were more radical, dividing the browser into floating rounded regions that separated the toolbar, sidebar, and content, with the webpage itself placed in a rounded container with margins—a layout reminiscent of Arc. After negative feedback, Mozilla abandoned the floating layout. SSPAI called the retreat a reasonable compromise, arguing that decorative floating borders can harm operational efficiency and reduce effective display space.

The final Nova differs from Proton mainly in rounder buttons and a pervasive purple theme, SSPAI reported. It does reintroduce the compact layout, available under Settings > Appearance > Window density, and in compact mode the tab height is even slightly less than in Proton. Nova also introduces Mozilla's new Acorn design system, which abstracts spacing, color, font size, and corner radius into standardized JSON design tokens. This allows interface updates to be synchronized across desktop and mobile without maintaining hard-coded CSS, and improves dark mode support.

Users who cannot accept Nova can temporarily restore the Proton interface by setting browser.nova.enabled to false in about:config, while another option, sidebar.revamp, restores the old sidebar but is incompatible with vertical tabs. Mozilla said the option will remain until the end of 2027. An official Firefox Proton theme is also available to bring back the older color scheme. SSPAI concluded that Nova is neither as bad as critics claim nor as advanced as Mozilla's modernization pitch suggests, reflecting Firefox's tension between appealing to mainstream users and retaining its power-user base.

In a separate note, SSPAI reported that Google Pixel users in mainland China no longer need to worry about VoLTE. The report traced the evolution from using Qualcomm's QPST tool to dissect the Pixel 5's carrier configuration lock file, to root tools such as Network Signal Guru for one-click unlocking, and more recent community solutions like Pixel IMS for painless 5G. The author credited Google for gradually relaxing restrictions.