Firefox Mobile Users: Share Your Thoughts on the Mobile Homepage! 📱

[Justine]

Hi everyone 👋

I'm Justine, a product manager working on the homepage for both desktop and mobile! I've been looking into improving and tailoring our mobile browser experience. I'd love to get your feedback in order to help our team address your needs and preferences.

Here are some questions we'd love to get your thoughts on:

• How do you feel about the mobile browser's homepage, and what improvements or features would enhance it for you?
• Did any parts of the homepage experience stand out as particularly seamless? Did any parts cause you difficulty or confusion?
• How would you describe your experience in accessing and interacting with the elements on the homepage?

Your sentiments, suggestions, and insights are important to us. Whether it's a simple thought or a detailed message, we'd love to hear your from you!

And if you'd like to leave DESKTOP feedback, you can do so within this thread: Desktop Home/'New Tab' Feedback

[Synchro]

Wow, I was afraid you wouldn’t ask about mobile Firefox! It’s fantastic to see this version isn’t forget, too. It’s hard even to rank what of the things below I need more in my browsing experience.

Let’s start from the shortcuts.

1. I definitely need to to have a possibility to change a pinned site’s (shortcut’s) URL. For example, BBC News often have a special page on their site for a lasting event, and due to the technical limitations sometimes they have to stop posting on one page and start a new page instead. It would be convenient for me just to copy their new page’s URL and to edit a shortcut I have. Now I have to delete from shortcuts their old page and then to add to shortcuts the new one. And of course this new shortcut becomes tha last in a list. Long story short: when I do a long tap on a shortcut I would like to see “Change URL” in a list.

2. Another option which would be good to have is letting users to organize their shortcuts manually by long-pressing on them. Just the way we can change the order of the open tabs in a tab tray. Something like this: do a long tap and keep a finger on a screen to move the shortcut or do a long tap and take a finger away to see a drop-dowm menu (“Open in private tab”, “Rename”, “Remove” and (I hope) “Change URL”).

3. As I mentioned in a desktop Firefox discussions, I would like to have more characters to be shown in a shortcut’s name in a mobile Firefox too. Maybe the name can have two lines?

4. And I would also like to have more rows for shortcuts. Two screens with 8 shortcuts (two rows, four columns, 2x4) on each, as we have now, is less convenient for me than one screen with 16 shortcuts (4x4) on it. Of course if it is possible to have more rows it is even better. Or to have more columns as well, as people use mobile Firefox also on tablet computers and they have bigger screens than smartphones.

Aside of shortcuts I also love “Jump back in” option. It is really help me in my browsing. I cannot say anything good or bad about “Recent bookmarks” and “Recently visited” as I have them switched off.

I tried to use “Collections” but unfortunately I couldn’t for the following reasons:

a. I can’t rename a site in a collection, when the default is either too long or too short or just ugly. I guess it depends on every site own preferences or something but anyways.

b. I can’t change URL of a site in a collection.

c. I can’t organize neither collections list itself nor sites inside of a collection (move them up or down).

d. Collections can’t be synced so I lost them once when my previous phone died, and after that I chose to use bookmarks and their folders instead as they have none of these problems.

Maybe I didn’t use them right but it’s just my experience.

Thank you for your attention.

[Justine]

Thank you for laying this out! This is incredibly insightful and I'm making note of them to bring back to the team.

We really appreciate you taking the time to detail your feedback and we're committed to improving mobile's user experience!

[Therow]

Mobile homepage looks old and odd I would like to get way to customize home page much like chrome where I can set extension to completely revamp the home page it's been years since people are asking for it, that would make it THE perfect browser please do this 

[Jon]

Thanks @Therow - what type of customizations would you like to add to the homepage? Any additional details would be helpful as we look to improve the homepage experience.

[Therow]

Like in chrome where we can set url as homepage, this would allow extensions like tabliss to work, these extension allow full customization so I guess everyone can be satisfied with this change 

[Shriradhakrishn]

Wallpaper in Firefox

Dear Mozilla Firefox,

I am writing to you today to request that you allow users to set their own pictures or images from their phone gallery as the background for the new tab page in Firefox. I think this would be a great addition to the new tab page, as it would allow users to personalize their browser experience and make it more visually appealing. Currently, the only way to change the new tab page background is to choose from a selection of 12 built-in images. While these images are nice, they are limited in number and variety. Allowing users to set their own pictures or images as the background would give them much more flexibility and control over the look of their new tab page. They could use pictures of their favorite places, pets, or family members. They could also use images that they find inspiring or calming. I believe that this would be a popular feature with Firefox users. A recent survey found that 70% of Firefox users would like to be able to set their own pictures as the background for the new tab page. I urge you to consider adding this feature to Firefox in a future update. I think it would be a great way to improve the user experience and make Firefox even more appealing to users.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

For more details Click here 

Sincerely

B R Shriradhakrishnasharnam

[Justine]

Thanks for the feedback! Wallpapers in general are definitely a popular request and expanding options and capabilities are definitely worth considering.

This is an excellent reminder that it is still something you all are interested in.

Thank you!

[Jeppie]

1. hide history in shortcuts.

2. text translations button on homepage. with the add-on now i need to open a website to use text translations. i hope when inbuilt translation development is further they will add a text translation button on the homepage.

3. more shortcuts on firefox focus. max 4 shortcuts are just to less. i need to delete everytime a other shortcut to make place for a new shortcut.

4. shortcuts in firefox private mode.

5. pocket news sounds like a nice idea.

[Jeppie]

You can put the text translation button here.

 

[Jeppie]

  Pocket news on homepage like google does with chrome.

 

[Justine]

Expanding content to include news is definitely something that we've been discussing as a team, so it's wonderful to hear that news may be of interest to you.

Shortcuts are important, especially for mobile, so customization options makes sense. Same with the translation suggestion.

Thank you.

[rbm4444]

Hi,

About a year ago I raised an idea for an option to hide the recent history from the shortcuts homepage. I understand the intention to follow the desktop design pattern, but for mobile with a limited screen size it can be a problem. Besides the fact that it can become a privacy issue when mobile devices are more susceptible to prying eyes.

I appreciate your willingness to interact with the community!

Kind regards.

[Justine]

Noted!

I've heard similar sentiments for desktop as well and it's definitely something that is worth looking into.

Thank you for the feedback!

[Anonymous]

I have basically only two problems with the homepage.

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/toggle-button-or-option-to-hide-recent-history-from-fixed/idi-p...

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/on-firefox-mobile-make-home-page-links-open-in-current-tab/idi-...

Don't force features on users, and allow them to turn features off if they wish. As many features as possible must be user-turnable (toggles). Let the users to fully control the look and feel of the homepage.

[Justine]

Agreed, allowing you to tailor your experience is important to us and that allows disabling features that don't resonate.

Thank you for the feedback!

[Babycog]

I would like to see a change on the homepage: the shortcuts to oft used sites are great, except when a site plants a shortcut that's not wanted. they can be very difficult to get rid of. Whether you keep choosing "Dismiss" or "Delete From History" these shortcuts often just move to another spot and are almost impossible to eliminate. please make it easy to remove unwanted shortcuts.

[Anonymous]

Hi, BabyCog,

I believe the idea that addresses this you mentioned issue already exists here on Mozilla Connect. Please visit this link. Feel free to give it a kudo and post a comment. You know how it goes.. 🙂 Take care.

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/toggle-button-or-option-to-hide-recent-history-from-fixed/idi-p...

[Justine]

Many people share your sentiment on this and something that I am working to raise the priority on.

Thank you!

[Jaime]

Hi Justine,

I appreciate the opportunity to share our thoughts on improving Firefox Mobile, which is the primary browser for many of us. On my Android smartphone's Firefox homepage, I have only enabled shortcuts. I find the other features like recent bookmarks and last viewed not very useful. I prefer to customize the entire homepage myself and avoid mixing it with suggestions from the browser.

I'd like to offer some suggestions that I hope to see in the near future. These are improvements I've been missing for a while, and some of them have already been mentioned by Synchro:

1. Bookmark Rearrangement: Currently, whenever I want to change the order of bookmarks, I have to delete them all and then add them one by one in the exact order I desire. It's essential to have a long-pressing gesture to rearrange shortcuts in the grid. This feature is a must and should be prioritized, similar to what can be done in Firefox for desktop.

2. Bookmark Editing: I also miss the same editing features available in Firefox for desktop. I'd like the ability to edit the URL of a bookmark I've created. Additionally, it would be great to have the option to customize the favicon. This could involve using an image URL or uploading a picture from our gallery to the app. Some websites still use low-resolution favicon images, and having them display with pixelation on our homepage is quite unsightly.

3. Hide the "Pinned" Icon: Personally, I'm not a fan of the pushpin icon located next to the bookmark titles. It reduces the available character space for the title and narrows the line space.

4. Grid Size Customization: Since mobile Firefox doesn't have a bookmarks bar that's always present like in the desktop version, I use the homepage as it is. However, the limit of just 16 bookmarks is not sufficient for my needs. It would be great to have the option to choose the number of rows for each page and even have more than two pages.

5. Custom Wallpapers: It would be a fantastic feature if we could select pictures from our phone's gallery as wallpapers for the homepage, instead of being limited to default options. Alternatively, having a wider variety of options to choose from would also be appreciated.

6. Distinct Dark and Light Mode Wallpapers: Currently, I don't use a background wallpaper for my Firefox mobile homepage, mainly because the same image is used regardless of whether dark mode is enabled or not. My smartphone switches to dark mode automatically at night, and having a bright wallpaper that doesn't match the rest of the UI is a bit jarring. And also, I enable dark mode at night to have a darker UI when using the phone from bed. Thus, a bright wallpaper contradicts this intention and disrupts the experience. It would be great if the app could support separate background images for light and dark modes, similar to Apple's wallpapers for their devices.
   For custom wallpapers (referring to my previous point), we could either have the option to upload two images (one for each mode) or use the same image for both modes.

Thank you for considering these suggestions. I believe implementing these improvements would enhance the Firefox Mobile experience for many users.

[Justine]

Thank you for detailing what you want from the mobile app. It's truly helpful to myself and the team!

[Justine]

I came back to this post today and just wanted to say thank you again for detailing this so well. My prior reply was concise, but everything was noted, and definitely appreciated it.

Many share your sentiments and have echoed repeating themes!

[Jeppie]

@Justinecan you tell us what the coming plans are for the mobile homepage?

[Justine]

Hi @Jeppie 

We're currently working on developing our strategy and feature set right now. I'll provide updates as I can 😊

[Aftermath]

Let ME choose if I want to remove a sponsor website from that page.

For example in Germany I get 2 websites: Amazon and Otto. I do use Amazon and I would love to help firefox using their sponsor link, but I never use Otto and I don't want it every time on my home page. But there's no option to just remove Otto, it's either remove all sponsors or keep them all

[Justine]

Thanks for the feedback!

Quick question – Would you be open to replacing it with a different sponsor?

[Aftermath]

Thanks for your work on firefox and listening the community!

If it's a sponsor that I usually use and would keep on my homepage (and tbh the only websites I use are Amazon for buying everything but clothes and Zalando and Zalando Lounge and H&M for shopping clothes, which is very common in germany), I'm definitely open for that.

AFAIK most people have nothing against supporting a company they like, without it being privacy invasive (for example identifier/ref_url identifying the user as a random firefox mobile user, not the user himself with an identification number)

[asgaut]

Overall, I'm very happy with the user experience in Firefox mobile, but there's one thing that I miss: the option to open a site in the same tab that I'm already in. Example: every morning I have a list of news sources that I going through. I typically go to the address bar to open the next site when I'm done with the last one, but by default this opens a new tab, resulting in a good deal of deleting tabs when I'm done with my list.

If it was possible to choose between opening new sites in the same tab, or opening them in a new tab, that would be a nice improvement.

[S2000]

Hope I'm not too late to the party...

Currently my biggest source of frustration on the Home Page (and possibly on the entire mobile Browser) is the fact that shortcuts and Top Sites were merged a while ago. While Shortcuts were manually set, Top Sites were suggested based on my browsing. However now you can't have one without the other, unlike before. As a student, it was nice to just have a few sites I chose as shortcuts and which were related to my studies, since I frequently need to access them. Now, I get flooded with dozens of suggestions for the same sites, sometimes even the exact same URL, not just when I've already manually pinned it, but even when it has already been suggested. So I take every few days the time to remove those Top Sites suggestions, since I don't need them and I don't feel like letting them accumulating for no reason.

I think that Shortcuts are extremely useful to access a website in one tap, but Top Sites are neither helpful nor useful. I humbly think that it is not feasible to accurately predict whether a website will be useful for a User, and Shortcuts (even on Desktop) should just be handled manually by the User, instead of having them removing those suggestions and decluttering their Home Page.

You've probably heard of this issue already, and I just needed to unload (respectfully of course! I hope I wasn't rude!) my gripe with it.

On other topics, I agree that we should be able to manually re-order Shortcuts (🙂) as well as Collections. Selecting the number of rows for Shortcuts is also helpful. Perhaps we could even reorder some components on the Home Page, for example putting Collections before Recent Bookmarks... it could be done as a Drag-and-Drop within the "Customize Home Page" setting.

Finally, for the "Jump Back-In" component, it should show me the last website accessed on Desktop on the last syncing. Currently, it shows a Tab I have opened on Desktop but that I haven't touched in ages (true, the blame should probably be on me for keeping that tab open, but nevertheless, the usefulness and efficiency of that component is maximized if it shows the last accessed/interacted Tab. Also, despite the usefulness of Syncing the last opened tab from one device to another, I'd like to be able to disable the "Tab opened on another device" part of "Jump Back In". It takes less space and more importantly, some Users (like me for instance) can just fetch a Tab from the "Synced Tabs" in the Tabs Drawer.

I hope everything I said was useful and not rude in any way.

Thank you very much for reading my post!

[ytyyt1]

Will custom themes for Firefox on Android ever come back?It has been a long time and this feature still isn't back. It's a shame a very basic feature just got removed for no good reason.

[Justine]

This is a great question, and for full transparency I'm not sure where this falls in terms of current priority but I can assure you that customization options are importance to the homepage team, and something that we intend to support.

[SteeringLight]

Hi @Justine,

Thank you for creating this thread, I wanted to express my displeasure with the recent change where, when opening a new tab, a top sites tile now opens an existing tab on you have open which is on that page. I see Asgaut's feedback requesting this, and it lessens my annoyance to see this confusing change wasn't completely unprompted by the community. Unrelated, but I'm also a bit annoyed I can't provide my feedback anonymously and needed to create an account for this.

I can see why some people might find this change useful, but the more I think about this change the less it makes sense. When I bring up the menu and select the option to open a new tab, opening a new tab should be the assumed/default action. I do sometimes find it useful when I have the option to open an existing tab on desktop, but this really gets in the way on mobile since I was unable to find a way to turn off this new behavior. I was able to "open in incognito private" from the new tab menu, copy the URL, then go back to regular browsing and paste to properly open a new tab rather than move to an existing one, and will continue to use this workaround until this new behavior becomes optional or is removed.

I know I should probably clean up my tabs, but that's really no argument for suddenly changing the default behavior of the new tab page to something that was never really the norm in a browser. I hope you have plans to make this optional in the future.

More generally, at some point I would really like an option for the new tab button to actually open a new empty tab (as opposed to the current homepage), and maybe prompt you whether you want a regular or incognito private tab. I find it very clunky to open new incognito private tabs in Android as it is currently.

I also just want to say that I appreciate Mozilla developing a Firefox port for Android, and am glad ad blocking extensions can be installed. Unrelated, but I hope the DNS over HTTPS option will be added to mobile in the future as well.

(Edited for clarity and fixed erroneous name for private browsing)

[Justine]

Thank you for this feedback. I can definitely understand your point of view.
This level of detail is really great and definitely something I will be sure to pass along directly!

[HMK]

In my opinion a browser homepage is worse than useless, it gets in the way.  As long as you allow us to easily disable it (via a setting, no more back-end hacks), I'm fine with whatever else you want to put there.

[bapaí2611]

My only suggestion is to allow the opening screen to be set to a custom url 🙂

[seseiSeki]

As many other people already stated: Separating Shortcuts on the homepage and random pages pulled from the history would be really great.

It also seems that the shortcuts are getting smaller and smaller in every update. Giving them more room for displaying more of the url or title instead of squishing them together would also make it less likely for someone to miss the shortcut they're trying to tap.

Since shortcuts have been getting smaller and smaller, they've also been going further and further to the top of screen, way out of reach for single handed use with a thumb. It would be great to be able to swipe down to move the shortcuts into a position that's easier to reach, like Yandex Browser does it.

Shortcuts at the top of the screen

And with just one swipe, they're directly under your thumb.

Thank you for your time and attention. If I didn't like Firefox as much as I do, I wouldn't make these suggestions, so I hope that it'll one day reach usability perfection and be easy to use without the need for regrabbing your phone or using another hand.

[Justine]

Thank you for providing those screenshots. I'm sure our UX designers would love to look at and improve the experience any way that they can.

This is super helpful, thanks again!

[seabearho]

Hi Justine. Thanks for adding this discussion. My suggestion for the mobile home page would be to allow the ability to pin a bookmarks folder to shortcuts.

[Justine]

I've seen this come up a few times, so it has definitely been jotted down and added as a future priority item.

[augustleo]

Spoiler

Thanks Justine for starting this.

On Firefox Mobile, it would be good to pin bookmarks or URL shortcuts on the homepage so that we can quickly access a site directly from the home page or new tab page itself. It would be a massive enhancement of user experience on the touch screen devices. Safari on iOS and Samsung Internet on Android have implemented somewhat similar in their apps. Safari neatly lays down the bookmarks on home page. One can just click the bookmark icon and start browsing in an instant. Samsung Internet allows you add website URLs on the homepage for "quick access". The end goal is the same. You start browsing in a single click.

Wallpaper customization perhaps improves look and feel but the ability to access the saved shortcuts or bookmarks from the home page greatly improves the usability of the browser. Remember that a browser's first goal is to enable people to start browsing as seamlessly as possible. And since most folks use bookmarks, adding them to the home page would be immensely useful. My two cents here. 

Thanks for your efforts.