Mozilla Releases Firefox 157 with Nova UI

Hot on the heels of the release of Firefox 156, which introduced a number of improvements to online file and image handling, as well as better video decoding for Arm users, Mozilla has officially started the roll-out of Firefox 157 via its FTP server. While the actual update notes have yet to drop, we know all about the changes in Firefox 157 thanks to earlier beta and alpha updates and Mozilla’s earlier roadmap detailing the UI changes slated to arrive in the Nova design.

Technically the Nova UI has been included in Firefox before this update, but version 157 enables it by default, where it was an experimental flag before. The Nova theme gives Firefox an overall rounder, softer look—with rounder pop-over boxes, tabs, menus, address bars, search boxes, and sidebars—and it adds pastel colors and tint to the browser’s UI. It also reintroduces compact mode and reduces visual clutter, according to Mozilla. Build 157 also improves HDR video playback, video and audio synchronization with varying playback speeds, and removes the built-in Amazon search engine. Building on the WebRTC improvements from the previous version, Firefox 157 adds hardware AV1 video decoding for WebRTC video calls, where software AV1 decoding was previously used.