Disable Library Highlights in Firefox 57 Quantum

As you may know, Firefox 57 comes with a new user interface, known as "Photon". It is intended to provide a more modern, sleek feel that’s consistent across multiple platforms. It replaced the previous "Australis" UI and features new menus, a new customization pane and tabs without rounded corners. Like the New Tab page, the Library menu comes with "Highlights". If you are unhappy to see them, you can quickly disable them.
Firefox 57

Firefox 57 is a huge step forward for Mozilla. The browser comes with a new user interface, codenamed "Photon", and features a new engine "Quantum". It was a difficult move for developers, because with this release, the browser drops support for XUL-based add-ons completely! All of the classic add-ons are deprecated and incompatible, and only a few have moved to the new WebExtensions API. Some of the legacy add-ons have modern replacements or alternatives. Unfortunately, there are plenty of useful add-ons which have no modern analogs.

The Quantum engine is all about parallel page rendering and processing. It is built with a multi-process architecture for both CSS and HTML processing, which makes it more reliable and faster.

The Library menu in Firefox 57 comes with highlights. They are special items promoted by Mozilla, which appear in the Library menu automatically. The more you browse, the more relevant highlights will become. See the following screenshot:

If you don't like highlights in the Library menu, you can disable them.

To disable Library Highlights in Firefox 57 Quantum, do the following.

  1. Open a new tab and enter the following text in the address bar:
    about:config

    Confirm that you will be careful if a warning message appears for you.

  2. Enter the following text in the search box:
    browser.library.activity-stream.enabled

    See the following screenshot:

  3. You will see the parameter browser.library.activity-stream.enabled. Double-click on it to set it to false.

You are done. The Library Highlights feature is now disabled in Firefox 57 Quantum.

If one day you change your mind, open the about:config page again, find the browser.library.activity-stream.enabled parameter and set it to true. This will restore library highlights.

That's it.

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

4 thoughts on “Disable Library Highlights in Firefox 57 Quantum”

  1. This works only when a new window is opened. When a new tab is opened the Library highlights reappear. How do I get rid of that?

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