How to set up and increase the top sites in Firefox
Today we will talk about how to increase the number of available tiles (thumbnails) in the top sites block on the updated Firefox home page.
In the new versions of Firefox, which are designated Mozilla, the home page has been slightly revised, adding a little more settings there. For example, the user can now finally manually specify which site and the signature under it he wants to see in the top sites:
However, the rest of the functionality of this TOP remains extremely modest. You can only customize tiles that are already filled in, you can’t add new thumbnails manually, in addition, you can’t move them, and there’s no talk about things like your own previews yet. But, what is most offensive, the user can hardly increase the number of elements in the top sites.
By default, there are six of them. Using the option in the settings sidebar, which opens by clicking on the gear in the upper right corner, you can add a second row and then there will be twelve thumbnails (by the way, you can also remove the top sites from there):
Actually, this is where the apparently visible settings for changing the interface end. However, in the bowels of the browser on the service page about:config there is at least one more important parameter, which allows you to increase the top sites even more or, conversely, reduce the number of available tiles.
Increasing the number of tiles in the top sites
The parameter we need is called browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.topSitesCount ( updated: in version 60 and above, the parameter became called browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.topSitesRows and now it is responsible only for rows of cells). You can find it among tons of other similar settings using the built-in search in about:config:
By default, there will be a value of 6 or 12 cells, depending on whether you have activated the second row of tiles or not (starting from version 60, there will be a number 1 or 2, depending on the number of rows itself). You can set an arbitrary value and thereby change the number of tiles. For example, we set 24, i.e. four rows:
It is surprising that Mozilla chose to “put” a useful and, as you can see, quite a working setting in a place so little known to a simple user. However, there are many more options, some of which would definitely be very useful in the main parameters of the browser.
Finally, as a reminder, you can increase not only the number of tiles on the Firefox New Tab page, but also the size of each of them. To do this, simply move the mouse wheel while holding down the Ctrl key. Thus, the top sites will become larger like a regular web page:
Larger thumbnails will help make top sites look like they were before Firefox 57.