How to remove What’s New Gift Icon from Firefox Toolbar

If you are using Mozilla Firefox as your default browser and running the latest version of it –  v79.0, you might have come across What’s New gift icon. The icon appears in the toolbar area of the browser. While it does not harm your browsing experience in any way, few users prefer disabling it. So, here’s how to remove Firefox What’s New gift icon from the browser.

Disable Firefox’s What’s New Gift icon from the toolbar

The What’s New Gift icon is seen on the main toolbar near the main hamburger menu. When you click on it, the icon shows a small preview of new features introduced in the browser. Apart from this, it has no utility. See how to disable it!

1. Launch the Mozilla Firefox browser.
2. Click the Open menu.
3. Scroll down to What’s New option.
4. Click the side-arrow.
5. Check the box marked against Notify about new features to disable it.

Let’s cover the above steps in a bit of detail!

Launch the Mozilla Firefox browser and go to Open Menu (visible as 3 horizontal lines).

Scroll down to find What’s New option there.

When seen, click it and check the box marked against ‘Notify about new features’ to disable the icon from appearing in the toolbar area again.

Alternatively, you can make the changes via the Preferences page.

Type about: config in the address bar of the browser and press Enter.

Next, type whats-new in Search filter box and search for the following entry of the preference in the window –

browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.asrouter.providers.whats-new-panel

double-click the preference entry to enter the edit mode and change its value.

The default value of the preference is set to as –

{"id":"whats-new-panel","enabled":true,"type":"remote-settings","bucket":"whats-new-panel","updateCycleInMs":3600000}

Simply change the characters appearing in bold to “enabled”: false.

The value field should look something like:

{"id":"whats-new-panel","enabled":false,"type":"remote-settings","bucket":"whats-new-panel","updateCycleInMs":3600000}

When done, exit the Preference page. Close the browser and restart it.

The changes will be applied instantly, and you should no more see the ‘What’s New’ icon appearing near the hamburger menu.