This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Disable the addition of *new* thumbnails

  • 4 replies
  • 6 have this problem
  • 10 views
  • Last reply by thangalin

more options

Currently, thumbnail images are disabled on the thumbnail page. Very cool.

But Firefox continues to add new links on the thumbnail page. Not cool.

How do I retain the current set of links on the thumbnail page, disallow new links, but keep the thumbnail page available?

Currently, thumbnail images are disabled on the thumbnail page. Very cool. But Firefox continues to add new links on the thumbnail page. Not cool. How do I retain the current set of links on the thumbnail page, disallow new links, but keep the thumbnail page available?

Chosen solution

No that is not possible. Firefox shows some most visited sites in the tiles on the about:newtab page, so if the computed frecency value changes then the tiles will be updated accordingly. If you want the tiles stay the same then click the pin button on the tile.

Read this answer in context 👍 1

All Replies (4)

more options

You can change the order of the boxes on the about:newtab page and drag an item to a different tile to pin it to that position or you can remove a website by clicking the close X to block that URL.

You can drag a bookmark or history item and drop them in a tile on the about:newtab page to pin them and have your own favorites sites showing.

Changes made manually on the about:newtab page are stored in prefs that you can find on the about:config page.

  • browser.newtabpage.pinned stores websites that you have pinned to a tile.
  • browser.newtabpage.blocked stores websites that you have removed by clicking the X button in a tile.
more options

Thank you.

The issue is that I don't want to have to continuously remove/block web sites. I don't want to pin any web sites. I don't want to change the order of the web sites. I don't want to drag & drop bookmarked pages to the newtab page.

I would like to prevent Firefox from adding new sites to the about:newtab page.

Is this possible, if so, please enumerate the steps.

more options

Chosen Solution

No that is not possible. Firefox shows some most visited sites in the tiles on the about:newtab page, so if the computed frecency value changes then the tiles will be updated accordingly. If you want the tiles stay the same then click the pin button on the tile.

more options

Here is a solution to prevent new items from showing:

1. about:config 2. set browser.newtabpage.columns to 1 3. set browser.newtabpage.rows to 1

Pinning, of course, then prevents newly added items from replacing the existing item(s).