Mozilla released Firefox 89 on June 01, 2021, with Proton UI. With the Firefox UI refresh, the company has removed the compact mode option from the customize palette. After the backlash from users, the organization decided to keep it for current users. But, Firefox no longer offers that density option after the upgrade, here is how you can enable it if you want.
What is the compact mode?
Beginning with Firefox version 55, Firefox offers three different density options in the customize menu:
Normal, compact, and Touch
When you set density to compact, Firefox user interface height will be reduced.
If you select the Touch option, UI gets bigger to use on touch devices.
Why is Mozilla retiring the compact mode from Firefox
Mozilla wants to keep Firefox simple to use and maintain. The company believes the compact option in Customize window is tough to discover and hence assumes low usage.
“With the Proton redesign (or refresh of Firefox UI), we have to make difficult scope decisions to ensure Firefox remains simple to use and simple to maintain. The “compact” density is a feature of the “customize toolbar” view which currently fairly hard to discover, and we assume gets low engagement. We want to make sure that we design defaults that suit most users and we’ll be retiring compact mode for this reason”.
Enable Compact density option in customize panel in Firefox
- Open Firefox
- Visit about: config
- Click on Accept the risk and continue button
- Search for compact, in the displayed results, toggle browser.
compactmode. show pref value to true. - Click on the hamburger menu button and select More Tools > Customize toolbar
- At the bottom, click Density and choose ” Compact (not supported)”
the compact option is back and available to select - Click Done.
Mozilla is recommending users keep and use the Normal density option for a supporting experience.
Has this move and new Firefox UI pleased you? Let us know in the comments below.
More on Firefox proton:
Firefox Proton Dark and Light themes are now available in Nightly
“The “compact” density is a feature of the “customize toolbar” view which currently fairly hard to discover”
And whose fault is that? I’ve been using compact density for a long time, and still using it even after replacing the small monitor to a bigger one. Anyway, my firefox is updated from older version to ver 89, so the browser.compactmode.show option is already set to true.
So is compact mode working now in v89? Because so far it hasn’t worked, I had to install the previous version, 88, because compact mode was not available few days or weeks ago when beta 89a was out.
It works
NO it does not work. Just tried it. Why do change something that was working just fine. What are they talking about “supporting experience”?
it does, but it’s not as compact as in 88, there is a (small) difference but it can be hard to notice.
if you’re still having issues and you’re willing to go on the more advanced side, you can change the look of firefox with userchrome.css but you need to know a bit of css for it.
Doesn’t work
I also have a problem with this statement ““The “compact” density is a feature of the “customize toolbar” view which currently fairly hard to discover”.
WTF is that supposed to mean? It’s hard to discover, so you assume no one wants to use it?
A browser page and _monitor display) has limited space, and I want to use as much of that space as possible for browsing.
Thank you. My FF looks normal again. I do not like that every now and then, Mozilla keeps forcing everybody to use some new iteration of the mess they call GUI refresh, thinking it’s somehow better for all of us. They need to stop doing this crap and give us the ability to customize the GUI however we need it to be. It’s getting tiresome after all these years.
Thank you for this tutorial!!
Thank you for your help, dude.
I’ve just updated Firefox to the V. 89 this morning and your tutorial helped me to go back to the Compact mode.
Cheers,
Gabriel From Paris, France.
Thank you for this little tutorial. I never understand the hype about UI changes. IMHO it’s wasted developer time. Work on making you program faster and more stable instead.
browser.proton.enabled = false, ftw
Oh Nice. Indeed FTW
Although there is still a Compact mode, it’s not the same. The line spacing in bookmarks is MUCH bigger than it used to be.
about:config -> browser.proton.contextmenus.enabled = false
Brilliant, thank you!!
Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!
Compact Mode is not working properly. While the bookmarks bar, address bar and tabs are compact, the folders on the bookmark bar are not. I have several folders that were sized perfectly to show all contents on one screen. Now, it is necessary to scroll. I have used a compacted mode since before FF 4, and this has me considering ditching FF and the monthly donation to Mozilla. You have screwed up, FF team.
W10 PC here.I have exactly the same problem even after going to about:config, as suggested above, re-enabling the density option and clicking on compact (not supported) in the customization menu.
Bookmark folder and individual bookmark spacing is still far too wide, and is evidently designed for a 5-year old with visual impairment.
Guaranteed to double your time requirement to find items in a complex bookmark structure.
Presumably the great masses use phones to watch Peloton ads on YT, and the small percentage of idiots like us who do real work on a laptop or PC can go 6crew themselves.
So who gave the orders to phark up the GUI anyway? It must be about money. All part of the dumbing down process from the same people who gave us woke and fake elections? Check out the comments on Twatter for the average intellectual level in the population.
about:config -> browser.proton.contextmenus.enabled = false
Thank you, this helped me fix this issue in 89. Do you have any advice on returning the tabs to below the address bar, which is my preference? (On OSX, if that makes a difference)
The vertical spacing between menu items, bookmark lists and so on is way too large for me. I have to do more scrolling which slows me down.
browser.proton.contextmenus.enabled = false
Thank you so much for this!
Thanks, appreciated. This brought back the narrower spacing between bookmark items.(W10).
I bought a larger monitor to fit more on the screen. Thanks for nothing Firefox (taking lessons from Microsoft… if it works well, change it)!
To fix the ridiculous wide spacing on menus and bookmarks:
enable “browser.compactmode.show” as above and use about:config, to change “browser.proton.contextmenus.enabled” to false.
This worked for me (until the next “helpful” update screws everything up again)
Many thx for the info. Seems to work.
Where does one acquire such secrets as — browser.proton.contextmenus.enabled = false–?
I did both of the above.
It worked for the menu drop-downs on the “File / Edit / View / History / Bookmarks / Tools / Help” menu.
However it did nothing for the drop-downs in the main bookmarks menu, from the bookmark “star” in the toolbar. This drop-down needs to be returned to its former compact state, how do I do it?
Compact is the only mode I use on desktop/laptop. Period. There’s no reason – to me – to waste vertical screen space (or any screen space) in useless emptiness…
C’mon Mozilla, removing customization because “it’s not comforming to the average user”? That’s the weakest excuse to remove a feature I’ve heard. And how hard could it be to maintain?
That’s like if microsoft were to remove the 0-20% from the volume slider in windows, because “it doesn’t get used often”.
Give options to your users, don’t take them away. I know it’s hard to believe, but not all users are “average users”. Some of us like to have control over our apps, and Firefox being the best open source browser, it’s easy to assume it’s going to have a bigger share of power users than “conventional” chrome-based browsers. And power users don’t like having options taken away from them.
I’ve used compact mode from day one, and will continue to do so, for as long as I can. The other options are too chunky for me.
I am not sure what is wrong with Mozilla recently. Weird and just plain bad design decisions, first on Firefox Mobile, now here. Literally everything about tabs got worse. You now have a visual disconnect between the opened tab and the page (it just looks like a button with rounded edges). They now have zero border in between inactive tabs, making them appear like a mass of text in a middle grey box next to the button. It looks like a third-grader made his first skin for Internet Explorer 5.
It’s like 2km tall. The only option that makes it an acceptable size is only reachable via about:config and hidden as “Density” (this has NOTHING to do with density) in “Customize Toolbar” (which this is not. this has NOTHING to do with the toolbar.)
In my opinion it went downhill with Firefox when they gave us this ugly cloned options menu form Chrome.
I’ve realized that just enabling the compact mode again doesn’t do it. The tabs are still vertically bigger.
So I have changed that also: (Thanks to your comments)
Set to false: browser.proton.contextmenus.enabled
Set to false: browser.proton.enabled
And now it’s even more compact than before – nice!
Together with the “Default88” theme it looks almost as before.
With almost I mean of course the ugly empty favorites folders. Looks like Mozilla hired the guy that was responsible for the Office 365 overhaul – that was and is a similar catasrophic design change.
I’ve literally grown up with Firefox, it’s sad to imagine that in the future I might have to ditch it because they remove compact mode at all or in general they dedicate thier software towards the victim phone users.
Is this a joke? the “touch” density option is almost as big as the normal view. barely any difference. who the hell thought this new UI was better or more modernized? you just took the browser 20 years of UI quality back.
I never even thought about looking for a compact view with the old UI, but with this new “modern” look I’d honeslty rather use chrome and support their monopoly over the internet rather than not use compact mode. the day they remove is the day im done with firefox. but now im just a very not pleased user.
I totally agree with all the complaints about the new ridiculous changes to the UI, forcing wasted real estate instead of allowing a compact view of long menu lists as we’ve been using for years.
Really makes me angry the way brain damaged developers force their crap onto everybody without providing a choice. And this is not new.
Still trying to find a way to reduce the stupid wasted line spacing in the History display…
Thanks! This works for me in Firefox 89 and Kubuntu 20.04. At resolutions less than 1080p the bar looks huge and horrible. The compact mode should be kept in my opinion.