Hi,

While it's a little convoluted, I believe there's a way to do this:

1. First, click on the gear icon in the upper-right corner of the new tab page, and under the "top sites" section, choose the number of rows of tiles you want (the exact number this corresponds to will depend on your screen size, but usually it's somewhere between 6-8 tiles per row).

There are also some other sections here, you can disable those if you don't want them.

2. Go back to the new tab page, and move the mouse over the "top sites" section. You should see an icon with three dots in the upper-right; click on that, and choose "add top site". 3. Repeat this process for every site you want to be on the new tab page.

If all of the spaces are filled with tiles that you've manually added, then Firefox won't add anything else automatically.

Hope that helps!

1. Clicking on the gear gives a dialog box with the title at top 'NEW TAB CONTROLS' and then only three entries: 'Show your top sites' with subchoice (checkbox) 'Include selected sites' OR 'Show blank page' OR 'Learn about New Tab' There is no other option. Nothing changes with hovering over this dialog box.

There is a help page Customize the New Tab Page https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-new-tab-page This says ' Show more or fewer Top Sites ' ' 1. Hover over the Top Sites section until the Edit link appears. ' ' 2. Choose from the following options: ' ' Show More adds another row of top sites ' ' Show Fewer removes a row of top sites. ' ' Add lets you add a specific site to your top sites by entering a link and a name for the site. Sites you add will automatically be pinned. ' ' 3. Click Done when you're finished. '

However, when I hover in the Top Sites section of a new tab, no Edit link appears.

According to the information recorded by the forum when you submitted this post, you're running an older version of Firefox (Firefox 52). Could you try updating to the latest version? The new tab page was redesigned in Firefox 57, so these directions won't apply to an older version.

If you aren't shown an option to upgrade, you may need to reinstall Firefox from https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/.

Alternatively, I believe the old design shows a "pin" icon when you hover over reach individual site that should do the same thing.

In Firefox 52 you can drag a bookmark or history item from the sidebar to a tile to pin this page. If you hover a tile then you see a pin icon appear in the top left corner of this tile.

See the last post in this thread - even though a post has been marked as Chosen Solution : the OP has the same problem as 'IKnowSomeGoodGamesWeCouldPlay ':

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1217366

^: that thread is about Firefox 59. The OP is using Firefox 52 and in that version you didn't have the Activity Stream design. Also note that the knowledge base article no longer supports Firefox 52 (using the show for selector for 52 won't have effect).

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-new-tab-page

See my reply here:

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1160222#answer-968764

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 from the sidebar and drop it in a tile on the about:newtab page to pin this item and have your own favorites sites present.

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.

@ cor-el :

I was merely trying to point out that both OPs do not want tiles to be added. Like the OP in this thread says :

" Firefox now automatically adds links I recently visited to new tabs. I don't want this to happen. "

I'm using 60.2.2 ESR because a site I use regularly requires Flash. For some reason, since version 52, my instance FF does not show the correct version. People whose Web sites I visit also see me as running version 52.

You may have a corrupted user agent that identifies you as Firefox 52.

• User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0

See:

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-reset-default-user-agent-firefox

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Finding+your+Firefox+version
• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/websites-say-firefox-outdated-or-incompatible

Help | About shows I have version 60.0.0esr (64-bit)

These are the only useragent entries in my about.config:

browser.uiCustomization.state devtools.inspector.showUserAgentStyles devtools.responsive.reloadConditions.userAgent dom.push.userAgentID general.useragent.compatMode.firefox general.useragent.site_specific_overrides

In theory "Resist Fingerprinting" could cause this issue with the user agent, but I get a Firefox 60 user agent when enabled.

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-protection-against-fingerprinting

Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions ("3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is is causing the problem.

• switch to the DEFAULT theme: "3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Appearance
• do NOT click the "Refresh Firefox" button on the Safe Mode start window

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode
• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-extensions-themes-to-fix-problems