Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

My New Tab page is blank. How can I return the pinned tabs to the page?

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by kinzau99

more options

Whenever I open a New Tab, my page is just completely white. It's super annoying and I can't seem to find a way to restore the regular New Tab page (the one where you can pin tabs and stuff). Please help!

Whenever I open a New Tab, my page is just completely white. It's super annoying and I can't seem to find a way to restore the regular New Tab page (the one where you can pin tabs and stuff). Please help!

All Replies (3)

more options

Hello,

You can restore the page by going to your about:config page and change the browser.newtab.url to about:newtab, or reset it to default.


In order to change your Firefox Configuration please do the following steps:

  1. In the Location bar, type about:config and press Enter. The about:config "This might void your warranty!" warning page may appear.
  2. Click I'll be careful, I promise! to continue to the about:config page.
more options

If you type or paste about:newtab in the address bar, does Firefox display the page you are looking for? By default it has a Google search bar and a 3 by 3 grid of frequently/recently visited sites which you can replace with bookmarked sites.

Note that it also has a faint grid icon in the upper right corner that can blank and restore the page, so check for that just in case.

If that isn't the right page, could you describe the missing page in more detail?


Sometimes add-ons mess with the new tab. Here are some notes on how to get back to the one you want.

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste newtab and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.newtab.url preference and enter your preferred page:

  • Page thumbnails (default) => about:newtab
  • Blank tab => about:blank
  • Built-in Firefox home page => about:home
  • Any other page => full URL to the page

Press Ctrl+t to open a new tab and verify that it worked. Fixed?

Some gotchas:

If Firefox won't let you edit this setting: you may have something called SearchProtect on your system.

If Firefox lets you save your change but ignores it: one of your extensions may be overriding it. You can review, disable, and/or remove extensions on the add-ons page:

"3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons > in the left column click Extensions

If the change works during your session, but at the next startup is back to the blank page: you might have a user.js file in your personal Firefox settings folder (your Firefox profile folder). This article describes how to track down and remove the file: How to fix preferences that won't save.

Any luck?

Modified by jscher2000 - Support Volunteer

more options

It worked! Thank you so much for your help!