hello, the new tab site provides a settings icon on the top left where you can switch back to the classical thumbnails easily: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/tiles/

Btw, classic mode still shows sponsored content.

that should initially as long as the tiles aren't filled with your own history - you can also speed that up by simply x'ing out sponsored tiles like you could do with any other thumbnail.

The easiest way to deal with the sponsored tiles is to just change the newTab URL to something else.

Just throwing a SWAG out there, but in about:config the place I would start with is to blank out this URL from the two prefs that have this value for - https://tiles.services.mozilla.com/v2/links/ - to block what I think is the source for those sponsored tiles.

If you want to remove the sponsored directory links on the about:newtab page then use these steps:

Set the browser.newtabpage.directory.source pref to an empty string on the about:config page.

• browser.newtabpage.directory.source = <empty>

Delete the directoryLinks.json file in the parent location of the disk cache to remove the currently stored directory links.

• delete directoryLinks.json

See the about:cache page for the location of the disk cache and go one level up.

The "AppData" folder in Windows Vista and later Window 7+ versions and the "Application Data" folder in XP/Win2K are hidden folders.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Show_hidden_files_and_folders