Mozilla to release Firefox 89 on June 01, this year with Proton UI. With the Firefox UI refresh, Mozilla is removing the compact mode option from 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 upgrading to version 89, 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 89
- Open Firefox
- Visit about: config
- Click on Accept the risk and continue button
- Search for compact, in the displayed results, toggle browser.
compactmode. pref value to true.show - 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 to 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 now available in Nightly
