Firefox browser New Tab Page has been replaced by Activity Stream, which is now landed as system add-on in version 57 and no longer a text pilot experiment. Activity Stream, which Mozilla says helps you ‘rediscover the things you love the most on the web’, displays thumbnails of top sites along with highlights from your bookmarks and browsing history.
For each thumbnail displayed under Top Sites, these options are available in the context menu: pin, edit, open in a New Window, Open in a New Private Window, Dismiss and Delete from History.
The Activity Stream feature schedule to ship with Firefox 57, set to display search bar, top sites, highlights and snippets.
Highlights shows the pages you’ve visited or bookmarked recently ( limiting one to per domain).
Snippets: After completing the onboarding tour, Firefox shows updates from Mozilla.
These can be removed by unchecking the sections under New Tab Prefrerences, click on cog wheel and choose what you want to see on the new tab page.
The hidden preference for AS is ‘browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.enabled’, you can toggle that preference value to false to attain old New Tab Page, but that pref won’t last for long as we know.
These are the activity stream default sites, which you can find in about: config.
Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, Reddit, Wikipedia and Twitter. Firefox displays them only when the browser has no history to fetch and display the data, case with new Firefox installations.
FYI, Mozilla has already tested experimental version of Activity Stream with Pocket integration, which you may see in later versions of the activity stream.
I want to ask: why these thumbnails are smaller than my desktop icons?
I agree they’re very small.
I don’t know what’s in their (Mozilla) mind when they designed them. IMO very few people click on NTP thumbnails.
Can i delete them all safely in about config? i don’t want this.
AS won’t be shipped with Firefox 56, you can disable Activity Stream by using the about:config preference mentioned in the article.
Can I add more “Top sites”? Two rows are not enought for me.
Yes. Visit about:config, search for tops, find preference and change browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.topSitesCount its value from 12 to 24 or x*6, X is number of rows you desire.
It works! Thank you!
You’re most welcome Laura.
I don’t have this but a facebook page, and small round circles (thumbnails) at the bottom. I tried to change with the about:config et al, and nothing happened. I went back to an older version of firefox 56 as I like the yahoo toolbar – and the same facebook page. Now I have a third gmail which failed to import my outlook mail (to stop skype apparently it disables all related msft accounts including outlook with archived emails contacts). Now when I click the gmail circle it goes to the third one instead of my primary account. I can not seem to be able to change this. Nor go back to squares of rows of contacts without the giant bug from a facebook selection. or what ever randomely shows up. Help please
I just solved one issue – the icon (cog wheel) was at the top and bottom right corner (grey on grey) so I did not see it at first. So I can edit my gmail I hope. Is there a way to get the old rows of square thumbnails to allow my own places to go to? Thanks