Updates to Android Navigation

[andyf]

Exciting changes are coming to Android: a new navigation bar designed to make your browsing experience faster and more intuitive. We have streamlined the navigation with back and forward arrows right on the toolbar so that you can move between pages effortlessly. Plus, the new toolbar and address bar will disappear when you scroll, giving you more screen space to enjoy your favorite content.

Here are some of the new features and improvements:

• One-Tap New Tab: Start a different task in a new tab without disrupting your current tab.
  
  
• Back and Forward Arrows on Toolbar: Navigate between pages without opening the menu. You also have quicker access to the tab’s history by long-pressing the arrows. 
  
  
• Auto-Hide Toolbar and Address Bar: Gain more screen space when you scroll. You can disable the auto-hide in Settings under Customize.
  
  
• Faster sharing: The share button is now at your fingertips instead of buried in the menu.
  
  
• Enhanced Accessibility: Buttons are easier to tap, meeting WCAG AA standards for mobile devices.

This redesign is not just about aesthetics — it’s about making sure everyone can use Firefox with ease. We've gone through rigorous accessibility reviews to ensure our features are easy to use for everyone, including those with special accessibility needs. 

Our aim is to make your browsing experience smoother, faster, more accessible, and more enjoyable. This enhanced toolbar and navigation paves the way for upcoming improvements to the Firefox menu. Get ready for a Firefox that’s built for the future! More enhancements to come. 

Please note that this feature is already available in Firefox Android Nightly 130 and it is still in development. We encourage you to try the feature and if you encounter any bugs or issues, we would love to hear from you. You can report bugs here.

[Synchro]

I cannot say for other people, but I am not sure I personally need this.

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One-Tap New Tab: Start a different task in a new tab without disrupting your current tab.

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What does it mean? Now I also can open a new tab without closing or changing a current one. Or do you mean that a "+" button will be just in 1 tap instead of 2?

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Back and Forward Arrows on Toolbar: Navigate between pages without opening the menu. You also have quicker access to the tab’s history by long-pressing the arrows.

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Can't I do the same by long-pressing on "<" button in the Android lower menu? If I go from page A to page B to page C and then return to page B, it will show all three of them. I understand that some people might be used to see both left and right arrows, but is right arrow so necessary to be in 1 tap instead of 2?

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Faster sharing: The share button is now at your fingertips instead of buried in the menu.

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But it is not burried - again just 2 taps.

It is not a bad redesign, but when it's implemented I will have to see two panels all time instead of one.

[Mutzu]

Great work! 👍

Could you please make the buttons right to the address line and in the navigation bar customizable?

The solid background of the navigation bar hides a part of the screen unnecessarily, I think.

An option could be to place the navigation bar symbols inside circles and apply a semi-transparent blur effect to the background of the circles.

For a fancy personalization, you could combine this blur with a custom color.

[amazingakita]

why are you hiding the URL? whenever I visit sites, it just shows me the top level domain, not the entire link. this is not a good choice, from a usability respective nor a safety one.

[Blisterexe]

Nightly has the full link now

[Genesis17]

Sounds awesome! I can't wait to try the new one-tap new tab and the auto-hide toolbar features. The ability to long-press the back and forward arrows for history is a nice touch too. Thanks for focusing on accessibility as well! Thanks for focusing on accessibility as well! Physical Education & Exercise Science could also benefit from similar intuitive designs.

[TerletPaper]

One-tap new tab has the same functionality as the home button already had except that it auto-selects the navigation bar input, it is arguably not a new feature, but a rebranding of an existing feature.

[myspace]

yes and thank you for the one tap new tab button 👍

[wutongtaiwan]

Whether or not the Firefox Android search box can be moved to the middle of the screen, I feel that it is better to be in the middle of the screen than at the top or bottom. However, at the moment, Firefox can only put the search box at the top or bottom

[wutongtaiwan]

I've used this feature, but I'm having some issues. The extension in the toolbar is too hidden, for example, I use an ad filter, I want to see how many ads the ad filter filters, but I find that I can't, and when I want to use the ad filter's manual blocking of page ads, I can't do it. This should be a flaw in the design of the toolbar, the extension is too hidden to complete some operations

[Nick5]

I absolutely loathe this new design to the point where I have created an account just to say how much it sucks.

The first thing I did was find a way to turn it off in nightly and if it makes it way it to non-nightly without the ability to turn it off I will immediately be switching browser.

It's bad.

[Alaeus]

Would you care to share why it is bad for you?

[SimeonUnhappy]

I will answer for myself, it is uncomfortable and clunky, i have the address line up and want everything menu related to be up on my screen, instead of down, and this is forcing this very ugly menu on users, if i wanted this type of a browser i would be using Samsung's one for example.

[suikaz]

current UI is one of things I love about Fenix, it's just right, maybe not perfect, but the proposed changes would make it much more annoying for me

[0x0d]

What is the flag to turn this off? I rarely use the back/forward buttons, and it's breaking websites for me (not registering taps because of the bottom nav). Please share the config flag to return to previous navigation style. If there's no config flag then not to sound dramatic but I'm done with this browser

[wutongtaiwan]

It's a good idea to keep both navigation bar toolbar styles and let the user decide which one to use, otherwise it will affect the user experience for those who are used to the old style. Don't force the switch to the new style

[Yahiroz]

Not sure I would find the new navigation bar useful, Android's back gesture/button works fine if I want to go back a page. Plus I don't open a new tab that often so I'm fine with it being part of the see all tabs button. If anything a bookmarks shortcut would be much preferred.

Also what about those who currently have the address bar at the bottom? How would the new navigation bar look like for them? I personally have it like this as it makes it easier to enter URLs/searches much easier with one hand use. As another comment mentioned I think allowing users to pick between the old and new styles would be best.

[ffffff]

Can you imagine how ridiculously thick the bar will be when tab grouping is implemented? Unless they do something drastically different from every other browser (a quick tab switch bar for group tabs), you'd have an absolute unit of a bottom bar: address + navigation + tab grouping. I'm not sure how future-proof this navigation bar is.

[drfuzzyness]

I hope that this is an option, but that the existing single toolbar option is kept. I understand that this is helpful to move the Android design in-line with the iOS design and other browsers, but Android already has native support for the back button and sharing URLs from apps.

I'd much rather have the screen real-estate on my small-form-factor phone than have controls duplicated.

[Ruhigengeist]

I also made account to add my dissent. I am very much against this change. I noticed it a a couple weeks ago in the Nightly build, and I turned it off as soon as I saw a way to do it (via Reddit) through the developer debug options.

• The removal of the URL path from view is a huge dealbreaker for me. As a developer and "internet poweruser", it is _very_ relevant to me what the current path is. It tells me where I am on a site. Having to tap to see it is a huge UX downgrade. I don't understand why this is bundled with a change to the UI either, it seems unrelated.
• I don't need large back/forward buttons, I will literally never touch them. I use the built-in Android back gesture action, and if I ever need to go forwards (which is exceedingly rare), doing so through the overflow menu is very obvious and natural.
• I have not once ever used the share button. It's very easy to long-press the address bar to copy the URL, so why would I use the share panel? It's just way slower and more tedious to use than just copying  the URL and pasting it in whatever other app. Android makes it easy to switch between apps (swiping the bottom of the screen with gesture navigation, or double-tapping the square under button navigation).
• Opening a new tab is extremely easy via the tab list menu. Why would I need a button wasting screen space for this?
• The reduction of vertical space by default is not welcomed. I bought a phone of this size to see more content, don't steal space away from me. I realize the bar goes away when scrolling, but there are many websites where scrolling isn't necessary (the page fits on one screen) so stealing space away by default is annoying. It adds another action for _every page_ to scroll to make the useless buttons go away.
• Refreshing using pull-down or overflow menu is already very fast and convenient when I need it. I don't need a dedicated button for refresh.
• In fact, I'd actually prefer to be able to hide the Home button on the current UI to see a wider address bar with more of the URL. I have not once pressed the Home button on purpose, I can just open a new tab for that.

If you're absolutely convinced you have to do this (please don't) _at least_ give us the option to continue using the current UI indefinitely. It's just so clearly superior in every metric to me, and clearly for many other commenters here who felt the need to express their opinions as well.

[uz]

It is difficult to express just how strongly I dislike everything about this.  I tried to give it a chance and live with it for a few days.  It did not grow on me at all, and in fact the opposite.

Seriously...

Android already has a built in way to "go back".  Gestures, or a dedicated button.  Everybody already uses the built-in way -- in Firefox and in all the other apps too.  We don't need another way to do it!

On the rare occasion I want to "go forward", I will _gladly_ trade it being one tap away behind a menu in exchange for avoiding visual clutter and a whole tool bar's height worth of screen real estate for displaying content.

I have never ever used the "share" button, and the idea that it should get top-level prime placement is plain crazy to me.

The "auto-hide" is not new, right?  It just more important now, since more UI is taking up more real estate by default.  Unfortunately, auto-hide doesn't really work with sites that are more "apps" than "pages" since they may have their own bottom-aligned toolbars and want to handle scrolling their own content.  So sites like Google Images, or Fastmail, or New York Times games and many others all now have this extra stacked toolbar at the bottom which cannot be scrolled away.  And then for people who have OS-level button navigation enabled instead of gestures, it's even worse, since they already have a whole other toolbar down there to begin with.

Anyway, when it _does_ work, I hate it regardless.  It is very distracting when I scroll the page to have a thing at the top animating, _and_ a thing at the bottom animating.  We humans are very sensitive to movement in our peripheral vision, and even after a few days I never got used to every time I scrolled a new page thinking for a sec, "wait, what just happened? oh yeah, just that dumb toolbar that I literally never touch and only gets in my way."

Finally, on hiding the URL and just showing the domain in the address bar...  What in the world is the rationale for that?  The URL is part of the user interface.  It is fundamental to how to use the Internet.  It is important for security.  It is important for situational awareness.  What do we get in exchange for replacing the path by blank pixels?

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Our aim is to make your browsing experience smoother, faster, more accessible, and more enjoyable.

Laudable goal, but to me it's a complete and total failure by this metric.  It's all worse for nothing better.  Please, please reconsider.

[Whiteshard]

I've tried the new design and I like it quite a bit. However, it should be possible to reduce the vertical height, which I think is the biggest drawback of it.

[timvisee]

While I'm sure this is great for many - I don't like this.

With the address bar at the bottom, the bar at the bottom becomes huge.

I'd strongly prefer a setting for:
- Show/hide bar with buttons
- Show/hide full URL

[brixter]

Isn't the current UI more compact? The new design just puts some buttons on the button bar below (back, forward, new tab, etc). Instead of 1 bar, we now have 2 bars.

I agree with the others. I don't use these functions too often enough to warrant putting them in a new bar for easy access. If I need to do back, forward, share, open new tab or refresh, I'm perfectly fine with the current way. I'd rather do 2 clicks to do these actions than have a secondary bar that covers the bottom just to allow me to do 1 click on actions I seldom do.

Isn't the refresh button prone to accidents? I disabled the swipe down to refresh action because I don't want to lose the current state of my page. I'm glad that the current refresh button is hidden. I don't want to accidentally refresh because I accidentally clicked the refresh button in the toolbar. Please add an option to remove the refresh button.

Also, I hate auto hiding the bars by scrolling. If you must promote it, please keep the option to disable it because I hate auto hide. I hate the distracting animation. I hate not having the toolbar whenever I need it. A toolbar must always be present even if it takes some space.

[lindajoewhite]

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@brixter wrote:

Isn't the current UI more compact? The new design just puts some buttons on the button bar below (back, forward, new tab, etc). Instead of 1 bar, we now have 2 bars.

I agree with the others. I don't use these functions too often enough to warrant putting them in a new bar for easy access. If I need to do back, forward, share, open new tab or refresh, I'm perfectly fine with the current way. I'd rather do 2 clicks to do these actions than have a secondary bar that covers the bottom just to allow me to do 1 click on actions I seldom do.

Isn't the refresh button prone to accidents? I disabled the swipe down to refresh action because I don't want to lose the current state of my page. I'm glad that the current refresh button is hidden. I don't want to accidentally refresh because I accidentally clicked the refresh button in the toolbar. Please add an option to remove the refresh button.

Also, I hate auto hiding the bars by scrolling. If you must promote it, please keep the option to disable it because I hate auto hide. I hate the distracting animation. I hate not having the toolbar whenever I need it. A toolbar must always be present even if it takes some space.

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I can definitely understand your concerns about the new design. It does seem like the transition from a single bar to two bars has led to more clutter, rather than making things more streamlined. If you rarely use the buttons that are now on the new bar, the extra space taken up by it can feel unnecessary.

Regarding the refresh button, I agree that it can be a bit risky if it’s easy to accidentally click. Your preference to disable it makes a lot of sense, especially if you want to avoid losing your place on a page.

The auto-hiding toolbar is another feature that many people find disruptive. Having the option to keep the toolbar visible at all times would definitely make navigation more predictable and less frustrating. It seems like adding these customization options would be a great way to cater to different user preferences and improve the overall experience.

[lackey]

Menu customization would be nice, since you are opening up so many new places for icons! Firefox desktop allows a lot of customization, and I think end users would love the opportunity to choose what those new icons do.

For example, I really want to Bookmark tabs with a single tap. But even though there are new buttons to tap, I need to open a menu to do this. 

[SimeonUnhappy]

Very bad and ugly design, i will also have to change browsers, at the minimum allow to move the menu up alongside the address line, some people like to have things up instead of down.

[wutongtaiwan]

I want the search box to move to the middle of the screen, not just at the top or bottom, which should be easy to do, you just need to add an extra button for the user to select

[Wurstkaiser]

Please just make this optional! I absolutely hated this change in the nightly build:

- I have my toolbar on top of the screen beacuse that's how I like it. With the update half of it is on the top and half of it on the bottom of the screen. This is clunky and, quite frankly, bad design.

- Two bars take twice the screen space. Sure, the lower bar is supposed to disappear when you scroll, but it still takes away from the original screen space.

- It adds mostly stuff that I don't or rarely need and therefore want to be out of sight: The back button is completely redundant with the phone's back button, which is also easier to reach if you are holding your phone with your left hand (which I do), the forward button is used so rarely that I prefer it to be hidden in the menu, same for the reload and share buttons. And all of that is presuming that you use the UI and not gestures to navigate. The tabs and menu buttons should be on the top bar, because it's my bloody main bar and therefore where they are supposed to be logically.

- The new tab button is the only usefull addition and it should just replace the mostly useless home button.

tl;dr: This update makes my user experience clunky and clutters the screen with new buttons that I don't or rarely need and therefore want to be hidden in a menu.

[jader13254]

This is basically 100% my opinion.

- Please not twice the view obstruction

- No one asked for back / forward button, the phone does that and forward can stay in menu

- Only good addition is new tab button, which I use 10 times each browsing session and is two uncomfortable clicks currently

- Please just copy chrome mobile, as most people will be switching from there, as it becomes unusable due to no extensions in 2024, and the intetnet is an ad and cookie banner infested wasteland.

Thanks.

[suikaz]

mobile chrome is unusable, it was fine-ish when the chrome home was available behind a flag (and I'm pretty sure that's what kiwi still offers), but what chrome does now is absolute mess

[zade]

I like the idea of exposing more actions quickly, but I don't use forwards much (and most use the system gesture for back). Maybe keep forwards in the menu and move share down to where forwards is at the moment.

I also really like having the URL bar at the bottom of the screen so that I don't need to reach in order to go somewhere else or copy the URL.

[amnesia]

The new design is horrifically bad. Nothing but useless clutter, wasting my screen space.

1. Why do we need the back/forward buttons visible at all times? If somebody is using the old school navigation, they already have a back button. If you're using a gesture-based navigation, simply swipe from the edge of your screen.
2. The new + button is useless, if you need a new tab, you can simply get one with 2 taps.
3. There is way too much vertical and side padding. Reduce to vertical height back to how it used to be (1 bar height) and create something modern, edge to edge.
4. Reload button inside the URL bar? Are you serious? We have pull to refresh. It's 2024 after all.

Just looking at the new design makes me feel like I've traveled back to early 2000s. Super ugly and dated, to put it mildly.

This change needs to be reverted immediately. Even my wife, who is far from a tech-savvy person, hates it. I'm on Nightly anyway, but if the option for disabling this abomination ever gets removed, I'm done with Firefox on mobile.

If you want to see how a modern mobile browser looks like, install Opera for Android and set the address bar to bottom. Very minimal, zero clutter, and yet everything is still accessible.

Not everything is bad, though, the new menu looks somewhat nice and I think it's a step in the right direction. But again, check out the Opera's menu (the user icon button) and you will see how it's done.

For example, why is the "switch to desktop" at the top of the section? The web is basically mobile-first now, I'm pretty sure the vast majority of users are not switching to desktop versions all the time. Move it under the "tools" button (or at least at the bottom of the section).

The "save" button should be at the top, because that's what most users need all the time.

You see that "help" button (question mark in a circle), right next to the "settings" button? Put the forward button there and move the help button to the left or whatever. I bet nobody ever taps it anyway.

I could go on and on (like how we still can’t rearrange our shortcuts on the home page), but I'm stopping here for now. Please, take the L, admit that the redesign was the wrong move. Go back to the drawing board, start innovating again, push the industry forward.

[brixter]

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@amnesia wrote:

For example, why is the "switch to desktop" at the top of the section? The web is basically mobile-first now, I'm pretty sure the vast majority of users are not switching to desktop versions all the time. Move it under the "tools" button (or at least at the bottom of the section).

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I use the switch to "Desktop site" a lot. A lot of websites are designed for laptops first, then mobile next. The laptop version is more functional. The mobile version of a web page has less functions and simpler formatting. I often switch to the desktop version if a website is buggy (ex. I can't book a flight because the textbox is not working) or the website's display is wrong (The display is misaligned, or picture or video is not showing).

Let the "switch to Desktop site" remain accessible. I don't trust the mobile version of webpages to function perfectly.

[Mark6825]

I use my navigatikn bar at the bottom and new toolbar also came with bottom and its so annoying that hide more than before.

I hope there should be option to hidr toolbar.

[wutongtaiwan]

I don't need a share button, I hardly share, I think it would be better to replace the share button in the address bar with a copy button, I often need to copy the URL link, it would be more convenient to have a copy button. At present, if I want to copy the URL, I need to long press the URL and then click copy, which is a bit inconvenient, so please replace the share button with a copy button

[Kache]

Criticisms:

• BUG: New toolbar covers up "Find (text) in Page" search bar
• Dislike new toolbar taking up extra vertical space
• forward/back buttons are redundant b/c of long-press "android back" button
• reload button is redundant b/c of "scroll up past top" to reload

Suggestion: "Tap and hold" menu

• Only have url bar with one action button to its right, e.g. Tab View button (and maybe keep 3-dot menu)
• Button "on tap down" unfurls a vertical action menu
• Hold the tap to navigate the menu
• Select action item by releasing the tap, "on tap up"
• Bonus: make actions configurable. The first item on the list gets used as the "persistent button" that activates with a single tap

[wutongtaiwan]

Putting the search box in the middle of the screen is the feature I want

[Sahbi]

The "new tab opened" popup thing overlaps with the entire navigation bar, which is quite annoying if you open multiple tabs in succession and after the last one you want to switch to one of the earlier tabs. I also don't like having the bar on the bottom and it looks like redundant buttons were added simply to justify even creating a new bar. Or a share button that's always obscuring the URL but you don't really need to use it that often to begin with? You can always long-press the URL > "Copy", pretty simple and not really any slower.

In general: not a very well thought out design.

[dlauri65]

I really hate the new navigation bar, and I dislike that it is at the bottom. I was able to find instructions for enabling debug mode and going to secret settings to disable the navigation bar, but I really hope that you will make it easier to and continue to allow us to disable it completely.