How to Make Firefox Feel Native on Linux Desktops

Mozilla Firefox feels out of place on most modern Linux desktops. However, that doesn't mean you can't customize it to fit your desktop theme.

Mozilla Firefox is the default web browser on many, if not most, Linux distributions. Firefox is also the largest and most well-known free and open-source web browser in the world. This may give the impression that Firefox would feel absolutely at home on the Linux desktop.

Functionally, Firefox works just fine on Linux. It's in the appearance department where inconsistencies start to show. Firefox feels ever-so-slightly out of place on most Linux desktop environments, but with a few tweaks, you can make the browser feel more like a native app.

Installing the Adwaita Firefox Theme for GNOME

GNOME has a very particular design. Most apps that aren't part of the GNOME ecosystem look inconsistent with the rest of the environment. Firefox, compared to many other cross-platform apps, doesn't stand out all that much. But it's still clearly not GNOME.

As it turns out, it doesn't take all that much to give Firefox a complete makeover. All you need to do is install the Firefox Adwaita theme from GitHub.

There are multiple ways to go about doing this. If you have the technical chops, you can clone the repository and build the theme from the source yourself. But you don't need to do that. The theme's maintainer has provided a helpful set of instructions for you to enter into a terminal. Said instructions are available for versions of Firefox distributed via a traditional package format, such as DEB or RPM, or as a Flatpak.

There are optional features you can toggle to fully complete the native GNOME experience, such as whether to hide the tab bar when only one tab is open, to display the GNOME spinner when a webpage is loading, and more. After installing the theme, you can toggle these optional settings by going to Firefox's about:config page.

There is a light and a dark version of the theme for you to select, which can help Firefox match the dark mode preference that became officially supported in GNOME 42 but was previously only available using third-party tools.

Whichever version you select, for now, the corners at the bottom of Firefox windows remain square and pointy. For some of us, this will be a small but noticeable distinction between Firefox and our other apps.

Customizing Firefox for KDE Plasma

On KDE Plasma, Firefox is relatively simple to fix. By default, it has a title bar. This looks fine enough at first, but the title bar and the tab bar no longer match when you switch to another window and Firefox loses focus.

There are two ways to go about addressing this issue. One is to remove the title bar. You can do this by right-clicking the Firefox toolbar and selecting Customize Toolbar to access the "Customize Firefox" screen. There, uncheck the Title Bar box in the bottom left corner.

If you want to keep the title bar, there's a Firefox theme that keeps the tab bar and title bar colors identical regardless of whether Firefox is in or out of focus. Just look for the KDE Default Breeze theme.

As a desktop environment, Plasma comes with many bells and whistles for your web browser to integrate with. This includes the ability to start and stop audio playing in the browser, manage downloads, and send files using KDE Connect. To enable all of this functionality, check to see if you have the Plasma Integration Firefox extension.

A Custom Firefox Theme for elementary OS

Like GNOME, elementary OS is a very opinionated desktop with its own style and guidelines. Apps not designed for elementary rarely feel at home. Firefox is no exception.

For this reason, there's a volunteer-created elementary OS-inspired theme for Firefox. Once installed, Firefox will look remarkably similar to elementary's version of GNOME Web, the desktop's default browser.

There are many ways to install Firefox, and they require different ways of installing the theme. Fortunately, the theme has you covered. There is support for Firefox installed via APT as well as Flatpak from Flathub. You can also theme the LibreWolf browser and the Tor Browser, which are both based on Firefox.

There is a version of this elementary OS Firefox theme for both the default look and dark mode. Plus when you open a private window, there's a vibrant purple adaptation included as well. Yet for the time being, the bottom corners remain pointy, a contrast with newer elementary apps.

With this theme, that leaves Firefox and Firefox-based browsers as your best option for a web browser that looks at home on your elementary desktop yet still has support for DRM-based media streaming, the kind of content you can't watch using the default GNOME Web. Firefox can also handle voice and video chat on the likes of Discord and Zoom, platforms that don't particularly give Linux-only web browsers high priority.

Firefox on Other Desktop Environments

Most other Linux desktop environments use a traditional interface, with the use of title bars, menu bars, and toolbars. You can enable these tweaks from the Customize Firefox screen without adding any other extensions.

Will making these tweaks make Firefox feel native? For the most part. These desktops generally don't have a large ecosystem of apps with clear design guidelines, so there's a bit less expectation for all software to look similar. Many will likely consider Firefox to look just fine on these desktops, even without toggling the title bar and menu bar.

You can run into issues installing Firefox as a Flatpak, depending on your desktop environment. This version of Firefox can only use your native system theme if that theme is also installed as a Flatpak. Whether this is the case can vary from theme to theme.

Having the Freedom to Tweak Firefox

Firefox is the most popular free and open-source browser in the world. This can sound like an abstract thing, but theming is a very tangible result of Firefox's libre nature. The code is available for anyone to view, edit, and share. That is necessary for people to make such drastic changes to the interface.

This is why Firefox remains the flagship web browser for the Linux desktop, even if it doesn't quite feel like a native app on many of the most popular desktop environments.