How to try Firefox Client Side Decorations (CSD) on Ubuntu

Mozilla Firefox has added support for client-side decorations feature often abbreviated as CSD in their release of Firefox 60. Users can use client-side decorations to make better use of screen space. It combines the Firefox main toolbar with the title bar that fits more on the screen. Users of Mozilla Firefox 60 can enable the client side decoration feature by going into the customize mode and disable the option labeled as the title bar. That will disable the title bar on the browser. All the options like minimize, maximize, and close are available in the tab row.

However, with the release of Firefox 66, Mozilla enabled client-side decorations feature by default. Users of Firefox 66 will no longer need to do anything to enable it.

In this article, we will see how to enable the Firefox client-side decoration feature on Ubuntu. We will use Ubuntu 18.04 LTS for describing the procedure mentioned in this article; however, you can follow the same procedure for other distributions and releases.

Enable CSD in Firefox

Here is the default and traditional view of Mozilla Firefox. You can see the title bar at the top of its window.

Enable CSD in Firefox

Now we will see how to remove this title bar so that it looks better on the screen. In order for Firefox client side decoration feature to work, you will need to install Firefox version 60 or later. If you already have the previous version of Mozilla installed, just update your browser to version 60 or later.

Step 1: To enable CSD, open Mozilla Firefox from Ubuntu Dash menu or from the favorites menu.

Step 2: Then click on the main menu from the right corner of the Mozilla Firefox window. From the drop-down menu that appears, click on Customize.

Customize Firefox

It will open a tab in Mozilla Firefox.

Step 3: At the bottom, you will see a checkbox labeled Title bar that is checked by default. To enable CSD, Uncheck that box and click Done to apply changes. You can see the below screenshot for easier understanding.

Change Title bar

As soon as you complete the above process, you will notice change instantly.

As you can clearly see that client-side decoration feature saves space by making use of unified header bars that makes larger room for client window and less for Mozilla Firefox itself.

client-side decoration feature

The Mozilla Firefox window border change will take effect instantly.

That is how you can enable and try Firefox CSD on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. If you no more like this feature, you can return to traditional Mozilla Firefox window by again checking the box labeled as Title Bar.