Remove Unwanted Content from the Firefox New Tab Page

Firefox packs a lot of extras onto its New Tab page: shortcuts, Pocket stories, sponsored tiles, weather, and wallpaper. Most of it can be hidden from one Settings panel, with extra controls available from the gear icon on the page itself.

This guide covers every toggle in about:preferences, the inline dismiss controls for sponsored cards and pinned shortcuts, the about:config preferences that hide individual feeds, and an extension for users who want a blank tab instead.

In this guide, I have covered:

What’s on the Firefox New Tab Page (and What You Can Toggle)

Each Firefox profile shows up to seven content blocks on every new tab by default. Recent versions renamed this view to Firefox Home, but the underlying sections and the Settings that control them are unchanged. Knowing what is actually there helps you pick the right toggle to disable.

By default the New Tab page includes:

• Shortcuts: pinned tiles plus your most-visited sites, arranged in up to four rows.
• Recommended stories: Pocket articles Mozilla thinks match your interests.
• Recent activity (also called Highlights): pages you’ve recently visited, plus bookmarks and open tabs.
• Sponsored shortcuts: paid suggestions mixed into the Shortcuts grid.
• Trending searches: search terms that appear inside the New Tab search box.
• Weather: a small widget at the top right.
• Wallpaper: a background image that comes from a curated Mozilla gallery.

Every item above has its own toggle. You can turn off just one or all of them.

Turn Off Content Toggles in Firefox Settings

The cleanest way to remove unwanted content is the Firefox Home Content section of Settings. Every block lives behind a checkbox, so you only touch the items you want gone.

1. Type about:preferences#home into the address bar and press Enter to jump straight to the Home panel.
2. Scroll down to the Firefox Home Content section.
3. Uncheck Shortcuts, Recommended stories, Recent activity, and Sponsored shortcuts for any block you don't want on the New Tab page.
4. Scroll a bit further to uncheck Wallpaper and Weather if those are also unwanted.
5. Close the Settings tab and open a new tab to confirm the changes.

TIP: Use the address bar shortcut about:preferences#home any time you want to come back to this panel quickly.

Customize Sections Using the Gear Icon on the New Tab Page

You don’t need to open Settings for one-off removals. Firefox surfaces contextual dismiss controls directly on the New Tab page, including a gear icon for global toggles and per-item menus for sponsored content.

1. Open a new tab to load Firefox Home.
2. Look for the gear icon near the top right of the page. Its position shifted slightly in the Firefox Home redesign, so it may now sit beside the Shortcuts grid instead.
3. Click and clear the checkboxes for the sections you want to hide. This mirrors the Settings panel and updates the page in real time.
4. To remove a single sponsored story or a tile you don't need, hover over the tile and click its three-dot menu, then choose Dismiss or Remove.

If you can’t find the gear icon on your build, the Settings panel covered in the previous section exposes the exact same toggles.

Hide Items with about:config Preferences

For finer control, Firefox exposes individual feeds under the browser.newtabpage.activity-stream branch of about:config. You can flip these to false one at a time without disabling the entire New Tab layout. If you’ve also been seeing trending search terms you want gone, you can clear your Firefox search history separately to wipe the saved suggestions.

1. Type about:config into the address bar and press Enter.
2. Click Accept the Risk and Continue to acknowledge the warning.
3. Search for each preference below, then double-click the row to set the value to false:
   • browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories hides Recommended by Pocket.
   • browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.highlights hides Recent activity.
   • browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.favicons stops Firefox from fetching favicons for unvisited shortcuts.
   • browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.system.trendingSearch removes trending terms from the New Tab search bar.
4. Close the about:config tab and open a new tab to verify the unwanted section is gone.

ALERT: about:config preferences are not officially documented and Mozilla can rename them between releases. Write down the original values before flipping anything so you can revert if a future Firefox update breaks something.

Replace Firefox Home with a Blank Page or Custom URL

Mozilla removed the legacy browser.newtabpage.url preference, so changing the destination of every new tab now requires an extension. The cleanest option is the official New Tab Override add-on, which is built and maintained by Mozilla.

1. Visit the New Tab Override page on Mozilla Add-ons and click Add to Firefox.
2. Grant the permission Firefox asks for during installation.
3. Type about:addons into the address bar and press Enter, then find New Tab Override in the list.
4. Click Preferences next to the extension and pick your preferred behavior: a blank page, your homepage, or any custom URL.
5. Open a new tab to confirm Firefox no longer loads Firefox Home.

If none of the toggles above removed every unwanted item, resetting Firefox to its defaults is a clean last resort.

RELATED: Reset Mozilla Firefox Browser Settings on the Computer