11 ms·

Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

464 points by shaunpud 8mo ago

dras227 8mo ago
[dead]
shablulman 8mo ago
[flagged]
dvhh 8mo ago
If I wanted a browser with AI, I would have used Chrome or Edge
yibers 8mo ago
Step 1: Launch AI features Step 2: Launch AI features kill switch Step 3: ???? Step 4: Profit?
- shevy-java 8mo ago
  Yeah, Mozilla made us do an additional step here. Before, we did not need to disable AI stuff. Now Mozilla forced us (that is those of us who don't like or use AI) into an extra step. Guess the only thing worse is being given no choice at all though.
- glenstein 8mo ago
  Search licensing that Mozilla currently depends on might become eclipsed by AI so it's important to ahead of the game whatever it might end up being.
RockstarSprain 8mo ago
I wish there were some updates about PWA support. Haven’t heard about progress on this since last August. Is it still in beta and only available on Windows?
cozzyd 8mo ago
Will it render &em; as &en; ?
- mock-possum 8mo ago
  Why would it to that? -, –, and — are all different things.
bartvk 8mo ago
Firefox is the only holdout against the ad companies, and I'm counting Microsoft amongst those. It's a very good browser, independent with its own renderer, with decent ad blocking and decent performance. It continually amazes me how people use a Google product on their desktop, as if they don't send enough data to an ad company. Actually, I'm not sure why I type this, any rational arguments are definitely not winning them over.
- Aeglaecia 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - throwmeoutplzdo 8mo ago
    You’re mixing up funding with control. Mozilla Corporation takes money from Google for search placement. That doesn’t turn it into a subsidiary. Google doesn’t own it, doesn’t run its roadmap, and doesn’t ship its code. Mozilla negotiates search deals the same way Apple does for Safari. Revenue deal ≠ corporate control. On telemetry: you’re overstating it. Firefox ships with telemetry on, but it documents what it collects, lets users turn it off, and exposes most of it in about:config. Google Chrome ties into a much broader account system, sync stack, and ad network. Chrome doesn’t operate in isolation; it plugs straight into Google’s data ecosystem. Firefox doesn’t own an ad network to feed. “Almost comparable” needs evidence. Comparable how? Volume? Type? Identifiability? Retention? Without specifics, the claim collapses into vibes. The bigger difference sits lower in the stack: engine independence. Firefox runs on Gecko. Chrome runs on Blink. If you care about web monoculture, that matters more than marginal telemetry deltas. When one engine dominates, web standards start drifting toward what that engine implements. We watched that happen in the IE6 era. As for uBlock Origin: yes, it’s a major reason people choose Firefox. But browser architecture shapes how long powerful content blockers survive. Chrome’s extension model changes (Manifest V3) restrict what blockers can do. Firefox kept the older, more capable API. That choice signals priorities. If your argument reduces to “both collect some data, so it doesn’t matter,” you flatten meaningful differences. The question isn’t purity. The question asks who controls the engine, who sets extension policy, and who benefits from surveillance at scale. If you think those differences don’t matter, make that case directly. But don’t blur structural distinctions into “basically the same.” They’re not.
TeMPOraL 8mo ago
I'm torn on whether to see this "AI Kill switch" as a win on respecting the users, or something to keep us distractewd while they ship through "Trusted Types" API that sounds like further restriction of end-user computing freedoms.
- LiamPowell 8mo ago
  I would absolutely love to hear your reasoning that leads to type systems being considered a "restriction of end-user computing freedoms". For those that don't know what trusted types are: Simply put, it splits the string type in to unsanitised_string_from_user and safe_escaped_string where unsafe strings can not be used in function parameters that only take a safe string That's heavily simplifying of course, but it's the basic idea.
  - TeMPOraL 8mo ago
    Skimming the API docs on MDN, it makes sure the site vendor gets to run filtering code over anything you'd want to inject via e.g. user script or console, securing it with CSP. I expect this to make user scripts work as well as they do on Chrome now. If there's a workaround, I'd love to hear about it.
    - LiamPowell 8mo ago
      Worst case you just run your userscript before any policies are created, but in most cases it's not going to impact userscripts.
    - duskdozer 8mo ago
      Oh just great. The web is bad enough already, I think I'll have to go live in the woods if userscripts get kneecapped
- debugnik 8mo ago
  Aren't those just overengineered sanitizers?
aquir 8mo ago
I don't know...at one point I got off Firefox because it was slow and I was never able to get back to it ever again. Maybe I should try now?
- zargon 8mo ago
  The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.
  - PunchyHamster 8mo ago
    Mozilla did plant the tree 20 years ago, then decided few years after to abandon it
    - glenstein 8mo ago
      They push millions of lines of code every year, thousands of patches and all kinds of measurable performance improvements so not sure what you're talking about.
      - PunchyHamster 8mo ago
        the 2% marketshare. I'm talking about 2% marketshare that they got from being de-facto standard, to 2%
        glenstein 8mo ago
        At their peak it was like 33% or thereabouts. The claim that they were "abandoned" suggests, well, that the browser was abandoned when it wasn't. It's a mischaracterization. Market share is about some combination of (1) software quality, (2) visibility and (3) distribution lock in. Chrome managed to be arguably better on (1) but it's due to (2) and (3) that it became dominant. If (1) was all that mattered we would all be using the Preso engine version of Opera right now.
        8mo ago
trainyperson 8mo ago
This just blocks AI features within Firefox. The feature I would really want here is a switch that blocks AI summaries, overviews, etc. on any websites you browse.
- monegator 8mo ago
  Unsurprisingly, ublock is still the best extension to do that, there are community driven lists that hide summaries and spam websites.
- greazy 8mo ago
  That's the job of uBlock origin. Eg here's a list https://github.com/laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist#ublockorigin--ublacklist-huge-ai-blocklist https://github.com/laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist#...
- Itoldmyselfso 8mo ago
  Much of the content online is already AI generated, and many websites have their code AI generated, so you'd soon be left with nothing but blank pages. :)
  - SkyeCA 8mo ago
    I'd rather blank pages than consume literal slop.
- Deukhoofd 8mo ago
  That's massively out of scope for a browser, that sounds like something for an extension.
- snowhale 8mo ago
  [dead]
shevy-java 8mo ago
Why wasn't this there from the get go? Many people dislike the AI spam; I do too. I use chrome-based browsers usually (I also hate how dependent I have become on Google; default firefox refuses to play audio on my linux system as they claim we need pulseaudio, chrome instead makes no such assumption and audio plays just fine, so one can go and figure out why mozilla acts worse than Google here - all the google-bribe money killed its THINKING ability), so when I do, I use a few extensions such as "disable AI overview" or similar. It is annoying that we have to invest time in order to uncripple the world wide web. Browser vendors should be much more responsible, from the get go. But they all want to jump on the hype train, to milk out more money. Greed is the driving theme nowadays. (They could offer AI based on people who want or need that, rather than cram it down onto everyone.)
- BrenBarn 8mo ago
  > Why wasn't this there from the get go? Even better, why was the AI feature ever added in the first place?
  - tgv 8mo ago
    Because a browser needs users, and some people like AI features. Firefox can't win the battle, or even survive, on an AI hating, nerdy user base.
  - Xylakant 8mo ago
    Quite a few of the LLM features actually add value for a certain group of users. Automated image descriptions for the visually impaired, automatic translation, ... Running those on local models is a net benefit for quite a few people, but they get a bad rep because they're "AI" and the current trend of shoving AI everyplace and with no means of escape means that AI in general has a - well deserved - bad reputation.
feverzsj 8mo ago
That's why I use Helium now.
- signa11 8mo ago
  yet another chromium clone iirc.
  - feverzsj 8mo ago
    It's basically ungoogled-chromium with manifest v2 support. Chromium is just technically superior than Firefox. It's a simple fact. The problem is the telemetry and AI features they added in it, which Helium or ungoogled-chromium doesn't have.
    - lpcvoid 8mo ago
      >It's a simple fact I'd love to hear why you say this.
      - signa11 8mo ago
        > It's a simple fact one mans fact, is another ones fodder :o)
krelian 8mo ago
[flagged]
- joncfoo 8mo ago
  Be nicer. You could’ve sufficed with: > It's good that they've added an option to disable them for those who don’t want to use or see them.
Satuminus 8mo ago
Good. I was fearing Firefox would also end up having too many AI-Features i do not want. But switching to Chromium-Browsers isnt an option anyways because of their Manifest V3 extension model. Restricting blockers? Whats next?
SapporoChris 8mo ago
[flagged]
- CorrectHorseBat 8mo ago
  It's not all bad is it? On device translation of websites for example is much better than the alternatives.
  - ori_b 8mo ago
    Until very recently, on device translation was not marketed as AI.
    - TeMPOraL 8mo ago
      On device or not, it's a transformer model, so some view it as tainted.
    - Kuinox 8mo ago
      Yet translation was the main application for applied language machine learning.
      - TeMPOraL 8mo ago
        When would've thought that to solve natural language translation, one would first need to solve... natural language. All those arguments about agents and hallucinations kind of distracted people from noticing we've accodentally built a universal translator.
        Kuinox 8mo ago
        It's been at least 10 years that google translate had hallucinations. Some translation simply change depending of a ponctuation mark. But peoples complain only now that they heard about AI. Of course it's not perfect, but I agree that we didn't had a machine translation as good before.
        8mo ago
sickmartian 8mo ago
Great, let's see how it works out. Firefox for Android has been killing it for me with the latest ux updates, I didn't expect major improvements there and was pleasantly surprised.
- dbdr 8mo ago
  Which UX improvements in particular?
- conradfr 8mo ago
  I don't see the appeal, it takes more "clicks" to do many actions and I had to disable the ridiculous new oversized "rectangle tab preview block" (whatever it's called).
  - _s_a_m_ 8mo ago
    yes exactly, their design was already better than chrome and condensed but now we have these outdated round and padding heavy toy controls again, just why?
- _s_a_m_ 8mo ago
  I actually liked the previous UI much more, the new one looks like a baby toy and uses more space because of the control padding. completely unnecessary.
- raybb 8mo ago
  This UI is great but do you get this horrible thing where sometimes the browser is shows a white screen and you have to force stop the app? Happens all the time on the latest version for my Pixel 9a. And did on my Pixel 7 too before. It's really horrible and I can't pin down any rhythm or reason other than loosely seeming to happen more often when I'm in battery saver mode.
  - Zardoz84 8mo ago
    not happens on my Poco
  - 8mo ago
altairprime 8mo ago
Ironically, I bet that a significant majority of the users that turn on the AI kill switch — which must have some kind of phone-home telematics attached — will also be users who have disabled Firefox metrics collection and so will not have their opinion counted. So, the most effective path here for y’all to be heard is not flipping the switch off yourself (do so anyways!) — anyone who cares at this stage has probably opted out of being counted already, after all — but instead to ensure that news of this switch spreads to absolutely as many non-tech people as possible. Don’t argue that they should run some script that shuts off their metrics and phone home and updates. Just convince them to shut off the AI and explain that this is why their browser got slow about a year ago! They’ll flip off the switch gleefully, their phone-home will count them, and y’all will have the strongest possible impact on the telematics graphs at Mozilla. I already ran the disable process manually on the computers I have friends and family IT duties towards, so I’ll go back and do the AI switch to be sure it’s counted next week. Yes, this is a crap way to be heard. But making a mark on feature opt-out graphs is probably the only hope we have left to get their executive leadership to stop drowning the browser for its own good.
- themafia 8mo ago
  > will also be users who have disabled Firefox metrics collection and so will not have their opinion counted. Gee. If only there was a way to collect users opinions on things. Welp.. guess we have to live with subtly spying on everything they do with our software.
  - supriyo-biswas 8mo ago
    If we replaced telemetry with some sort of survey emails and phone calls, we'd get exactly another 500-thread discussion on HN about how "Mozilla is collecting emails to sell to the highest bidder!", "Mozilla is sending us spam!" and whatnot.
  - godelski 8mo ago
    Most people aren't vocal. Most people who are vocal aren't representative of users. Many vocal people aren't even users. Don't get me wrong, I turn off telemetry, but you're acting like it's easy to get that information. You act like people don't scream when Firefox prompts people with surveys. You act like there isn't bias in survey takers. If you just pretend everything is easy we'll just end up reinventing the same evils we're trying to fight today. Unfortunately most evils are created from good intentions. I hear there's an entire road paved that way
bpavuk 8mo ago
last time when I updated Firefox, the package manager began building ONNX Runtime from source, which my "minuscule" 16GB of RAM couldn't handle. I want that during install time, as I don't like the idea of rebuilding ONNX every time Firefox updates, period.
- charcircuit 8mo ago
  That is an issue with your OS. Your OS vendor should be precompiling everything for you.
- Zardoz84 8mo ago
  Gentoo ?
  - bpavuk 8mo ago
    no, NixOS Unstable. normally, they precompile such stuff, but ONNX decided that it wants to link against my ROCm instance specifically. looks like soon we will have to resort to dirty workarounds akin to those in Blender (HIP, CUDA support)
snowhale 8mo ago
[dead]
- Xylakant 8mo ago
  People vehemently asked for a kill switch that does exactly that - kill off all AI-related features. I quite like the local LLM translations etc., but jedem Tierchen sein Plaisierchen, as they say over here.
  - duskdozer 8mo ago
    Seems like willful disregard of the fact that "AI" has been now pushed as synonymous with chatbots, "AI summaries", LLM text generation when convenient, but then at criticism, it goes back to "oh but machine translators are AI too".
- TeMPOraL 8mo ago
  Thing is, there's a large (or at least certainly vocal) contingent of users (and mostly techies, to boot) that view "AI" as the Devil, and transformer models as the original sin, and they want to refuse to partake, wholesale. This feature seems to be a nod to people with this worldview. EDIT: See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47133786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47133786 liking AI features to defecating on your food. It's not a technical objection, it's a principled one.
  - ryandrake 8mo ago
    I figure, hey, at least Mozilla listened and provided the opt-out. It could be worse. I also happen to be in the "food defecating analogy" camp, and I can give the developer an unenthusiastic thumbs up for at least listening to the peanut gallery this time. Ideally they wouldn't make the product bad, with a badness opt-out, in the first place, but everyone in Silicon Valley's got to feed the AI monkey. So I guess this is the best we can expect.
    - TeMPOraL 8mo ago
nullsanity 8mo ago
[flagged]
- Aeglaecia 8mo ago
  i intended to ask what the difference was between two browsers that are both beholden to a company whose express goal is to suck up personal data. so far ive gotten vitriol, AI, and downvotes. my actual question remains unanswered. if you'd like to answer the question that would be cool! but yeah if you dont want to answer , it'd probably be easier to say nothing than to tell me to die alone
- jahsome 8mo ago
  I was being sincere, my friend. I genuinely envy that worldview. I long for it. I wish above nearly all else I could reset. I was being authentic and vulnerable. Why does that infuriate you? Read your statement again and tell me who the pessimist is, and who is most in need of a break from the internet.
  - debugnik 8mo ago
    You envy the worldview in which people back their opinions with actual arguments?
    - jahsome 8mo ago
      I envy the worldview it's possible someone can take money from another and still maintain independence. What's up with the straw men?
      - debugnik 8mo ago
        > What's up with the avalanche of straw men? Poor quality comments lead to poor quality replies. I won't deny mine is as well.
        deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
nuker 8mo ago
Is there disable auto-update setting in GUI? Last time i looked there was none and i had to create some settings.json file for that.
shultays 8mo ago
Probably not enough for AI haters, we need separate executables with kill switch already triggered!
- lpcvoid 8mo ago
  That would be better, yeah. Ideally some #ifdefs that I can configure to remove all the slop from the binary itself ;)
  - account42 8mo ago
    Really all this bloat should just be extensions instead of part of the base browser code base.
fleroviumna 8mo ago
[dead]
akimbostrawman 8mo ago
Another opt out anti feature. Luckily better forks like Mullvad Browser and LibreWolf exist that actually deliver what Firefox promises.
ddxv 8mo ago
Where are the AI features in Firefox? Looking around right now the only one I see is right click tab -> Summarize page (NEW). I googled a bit and see they have some grouping of tabs feature I've never used/seen (or want). The only other maybe AI feature I remember seeing is the odd left hand bar that is there on fresh installs and I usually remove to declutter. Are those the features this kill switch removes or was there a deeper issue here?
- godelski 8mo ago
  There's also a side window you can open that can connect to a chatbot. There's translation (on device). Also semantic history search.
- mrklol 8mo ago
  Firefox mentions the following ones: "- Translations, which help you browse the web in your preferred language. - Alt text in PDFs, which add accessibility descriptions to images in PDF pages. - AI-enhanced tab grouping, which suggests related tabs and group names. - Link previews, which show key points before you open a link. - AI chatbot in the sidebar, which lets you use your chosen chatbot as you browse, including options like Anthropic Claude, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini and Le Chat Mistral."
  - mort96 8mo ago
    I wonder what sort of user testing made them decide that what Firefox users really need is a chat bot in the site bar. Isn't a chat bot in a tab good enough? And calling translation "AI" seems like deceitful retroactive rebranding. Why is machine translation suddenly "AI" now? It was never branded as such before. Is "AI" here just used to mean machine learning?
    - johnnyanmac 8mo ago
      Wouldn't be the first time. Google gave an option to turn off gemini in Gmail, and suddenly the inbox tabs they had for over a decade decided to disappear.
godelski 8mo ago
Firefox does what some people want, people complain. Firefox does what other people want, people complain. Firefox does what both people want, people complain. I'm sorry, but we'll never get corporations to do what we want if we don't throw them the smallest bone when we get our way. You need positive reinforcement too, not just negative. If it's all negative they just stop caring and you get companies lot Google who just don't give a shit anymore. And yes, there are some AI features I like and I want in the browser. I get a lot of utility out of translation as well as semantic search of my history. I don't want agents in my browser but get, Firefox is giving us choices. Look, no one needs to like Firefox, but let's also be honest, it's the best we got right now. Google, Apple, and Microsoft are shoving agents down our throats and putting us in walled gardens that are getting harder and harder to break from. I don't care what flavor of chromium you use, Google is still using it to control the way the web works. Everyone loves to say how chromium is has greater coverage of standards but never takes a second to question who sets those standards. I'm sorry guys, that's the state of things now. You can't fight Google by switching to chromium. It's still their vehicle to eat the internet. Our choices right now are Safari, Firefox, and maybe ladybird. It's slim pickings and nothing is close to perfect. At this point it doesn't even matter if Mozilla is evil, because at least they're the enemy of our enemy. Google is keeping them on life support to avoid monopoly claims but how long will they need that? So what, we're just going to hand the keys of the kingdom to the guys selling artisian turd sandwiches because what, there isn't enough mayo on your ham sandwich? Because you don't like ham? We got a win. Celebrate. Take the break from being cynical. There's bigger battles to fight and there'll be more tomorrow. Take the night off and don't be a sore winner
- bartvk 8mo ago
  Nowadays, I avoid certain topics. For instance any post about macOS becomes one giant complaint. Thanks for staying positive. I like Firefox, I think it's a very nice holdout against adware.
- PunchyHamster 8mo ago
  > So what, we're just going to hand the keys of the kingdom to the guys selling artisian turd sandwiches because what, there isn't enough mayo on your ham sandwich? Because you don't like ham? Firefox is the artisan turd sandwich. They are burning dev time on features barely anyone asked, while bleeding market share for last decade
orthoxerox 8mo ago
This is great news. I recently updated AMD Adrenalin, and the "minimal" version doesn't let you change the distribution of unified RAM on Strix Halo. I installed the "full" version, and it wanted me to install a 10GB "local AI assistant" to "help" me configure it. When I opened the program, it showed me a non-dismissable fake chat that occupied 25% of the screen, prompting me to click it and replace it with a real one. I remember when every other software prompted you to install Bonzi Buddy or some other intrusive search bar. This AI push is even worse.
jeisc 8mo ago
Now I need a switch for my smartphone and my computer too.
techpulse_x 8mo ago
[flagged]
fnord123 8mo ago
I don't mind the AI features per se, but is there a configuration setting to sent the traffic through a local AI Gateway to prevent the AI from receiving private information? At the very least to track what is sent over the wire.
- fnord123 8mo ago
  Found it: browser.ml.chat.provider
nextlevelwizard 8mo ago
Did they also fire the CEO who wanted to make Firefox into AI browser?
haritha-j 8mo ago
Welcome to 2026, where the biggest feature is the ability to turn off the AI they forced onto you.
jll29 8mo ago
In case you're looking for the opposite, not an AI "kill switch", but a propaganda kill switch using AI to fight disinformatiom, try BiasScanner: BiasScanner - Firefox Plug-In https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/bias-scanner/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/bias-scanner/ Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.10829 https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.10829
ItsBob 8mo ago
Maybe it's just me but why is it on by default? Why is this shit not off in the first place? Why can't Firefox just be a browser with great html, css, js rendering and then have a bunch of toggles for extra crap that people want? Do they actually have metrics that show "When we enable this crap by default we make an extra $X Million per year"? I'd put money on that being untrue. I bet it's like the data-driven ad spend - I've yet to see anything that proves that hoovering up bajillions of data points on each person moves the needle on spending beyond just showing a context-relevant ad, e.g. An ad for fishing gear on a blog post about fishing gear! Honestly, I feel more and more every day like old-man-shaking-fist-at-clouds! Can we not just have something that works without spying, without engagement-driven shit switched on all the fucking time? I think of the Simpsons Mr Brown meme where he's asking "Is it me that's wrong?". I can't be the only person that thinks this way!
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- aembleton 8mo ago
  Sounds like LibreWolf would suit you better: https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/
- sigmar 8mo ago
  >Maybe it's just me but why is it on by default? Why is this shit not off in the first place? Because there would be millions of emails to support asking "why can't Firefox translate a page the same way chrome can?" from people that couldn't find the AI opt-in switch.
- hypeatei 8mo ago
  > Can we not just have something that works without spying, without engagement-driven shit switched on all the fucking time? Absolutely not! Making someone opt-in (the horror!) would result in too much confusion and support tickets! We can't ignore those tickets and tell people to figure it out, we have to cave and turn all the bullshit on by default. I think a lot of our problems can be explained by: corporations lacking a spine and people unwilling to learn about the computer they use everyday. It's basically unacceptable to not know how to change a tire if you own a car but clicking through some browser settings is too hard, I guess.
mmsc 8mo ago
In addition to completely disabling AI, I found the following setting extremely convinent to disable in about:config. They clutter up my right-click on a link or on text selection. browser.translations.select.enable dom.text_fragments.enabled privacy.query_stripping.strip_on_share.enabled devtools.accessibility.enabled Now if only I could get rid of "Print selection" and "Services" when right-clicking, too (on MacOS)
- sunaookami 8mo ago
  I wish we could also disable "Send via email" when right clicking a picture, I constantly misclick and userChrome.css does not work for the context menu on macOS since it's natively rendered...
  - windowliker 8mo ago
    > userChrome.css does not work for the context menu on macOS Putting: #context-sendimage { display:none!important; } in that file works for me.
    - sunaookami 8mo ago
      Does not work on macOS, it uses native context menus that can't be styled via userChrome.css.
      - mmsc 8mo ago
        Try disabling widget.macos.native-context-menus
        sunaookami 8mo ago
        That's what was missing, thank you!
      - windowliker 8mo ago
        > Does not work on macOS Yes it does.
karlkloss 8mo ago
Wake me when they add webserial.
carschno 8mo ago
The page seems to be a copy from the original Mozilla press release from February 2nd: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/ It was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46858492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46858492
- stevekemp 8mo ago
  Yeah flagged as a spammy source.
altern8 8mo ago
I love how AI's most-requested feature is always a way to completely disable it.
icf80 8mo ago
Meanwhile I still do not have the option to change/create the profile from menu. I kow about about:profiles but I dont have this: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/profile-management/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/profile-management/
- AlienRobot 8mo ago
  You can do this in Vivaldi if you don't want to use Chrome.
- FranklinMaillot 8mo ago
  It's finally there but you have to enable it in `about:config`. Search for `browser.profiles.enabled`.
hnarn 8mo ago
What an absolute dystopia when disabling AI is considered a "feature". Obviously the _enabling_ of it should be the "feature" if anything, and considering popular opinion there is absolutely no reason to enable it by default.
- gkbrk 8mo ago
  > considering popular opinion there is absolutely no reason to enable it by default You need to update your priors. The popular opinion is there is a reason to enable it by default. ChatGPT is the #5 most popular website in the world, more popular than Wikipedia, Reddit or Twitter. The vast majority of users want to use AI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-visited_websites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-visited_websites
  - HWR_14 8mo ago
    And there is no YouTube, Facebook or Instagram (#2, #3, #4) default integration for Mozilla
    - gkbrk 8mo ago
      Firefox has YouTube integration of course. Here's a Firefox file [1] specifically for integrating YouTube videos into their picture-in-picture system. Your random video website won't get this treatment of course, need to be a popular one. Here's a piece of C++ code [2] in the Firefox engine that specifically rewrites old YouTube embeds from their old HTML embed snippet to the new one. Again, your own video website will never be so deeply integrated into Firefox because it's not a top 10 website. Firefox Readability mode makes pages more readable by removing useless stuff like videos. Unless it's a YouTube [3] or other top-N popular video website of course. YouTube videos are given special treatment because it's popular and having small integrations like this make the user experience better. [1]: https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/blob/1f43fe5ffadde0b6898daf607cabb3335dd75d6f/browser/extensions/pictureinpicture/video-wrappers/youtube.js https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/blob/1f43fe5ffadd... [2]: https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/blob/1f43fe5ffadde0b6898daf607cabb3335dd75d6f/dom/base/nsObjectLoadingContent.cpp#L506 https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/blob/1f43fe5ffadd... [3]: https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/blob/1f43fe5ffadde0b6898daf607cabb3335dd75d6f/toolkit/components/reader/readability/Readability.js#L2186 https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/blob/1f43fe5ffadd...
kittikitti 8mo ago
At this point, the industry wide decision to have AI as opt-out is suspicious. Why not have an AI opt-in default? It would certainly save so much trouble from the Luddites. On the other hand, an AI opt-in default would be not using any technology at all (where opting in would be turning on your computer or device) under a dictionary definition of artificial intelligence.
mfru 8mo ago
Please let whoever steers Thunderbird development and road map also steer Firefox. Thunderbird is at the moment the pinnacle of user-centered, focused and down-to-earth development of open-source software.
- SV_BubbleTime 8mo ago
  Can I replace Outlook yet? I don’t buy the “oh well, kinda sort of for like 60% of mail features and possibly a read only calendar in Two Weeks” I switched away from Thunderbird to Outlook TWO FULL DECADES AGO, and in that time they have never once given me a possibility to switch back. Like it or not, business runs on Office/Outlook.
- setopt 8mo ago
  That’s because Thunderbird is no longer part of Mozilla but an independent, community-developed project.
  - reedciccio 8mo ago
    Thunderbird has been re-added to the products steered by the Mozilla Foundation. https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/11/the-untold-history-of-thunderbird/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/11/the-untold-history-of-t...
    - setopt 8mo ago
      I didn’t know that. Thanks for the update!
  - 3OCSzk 8mo ago
    dubious, disingenuous claim.
- elorant 8mo ago
  Apart from the UI which is crap since their last major update. There are menu options everywhere, two ribbons on the top, a hamburger menu on the right and another on the left. For a long time you opened Thunderbird and it didn't default on the last message that you received but somewhere in the middle of the heap.
ninkendo 8mo ago
(This post is directed to all software that shoves features like this in my face, and especially Microsoft more than Firefox.) My problem with all software that shoves these AI features in my face, is that I don’t use features under duress. If you interrupt what I’m doing to push me to use a feature, I won’t use it. If you’re a web designer and you block the page to tell me to sign up for an account, I close the tab and vow to never create an account. If you stop what I’m doing to ask me to rate your app, I’m going to give it 1 star. Et cetera. Now I’ll be the first to admit this is childish… it’s a flaw in my character. When I feel pushed, I push back, and software pushing me makes me irrationally angry for reasons I can’t quite articulate. In some ways I wish I wasn’t like this. But I can’t be alone. I’m certain there is a non-negligible number of people like me, and when a browser immediately shoves AI features in my face on first launch, well, the first thing I’m going to do is disable them. The especially tragic part is that I personally find LLMs useful! And I’m at the point where I sorta want to install a Firefox extension for ChatGPT now. But the actual browser AI features were pushed on me in a way that made me feel violated, so I can’t use them on principle. Maybe in a few years I guess. If instead these companies would just dial it back several notches, I would have had the curiosity to try these features out myself, and I’d likely be using them by now. But the way they’ve tried so hard to force them on me has destroyed my trust and now, not only am I not using whatever feature they promote, I hate their product more than I otherwise would. Firefox isn’t actually that bad here, and now that there’s a simple kill switch, I may actually try their chatbot sidebar thing. But for companies like MS, I will never, ever, ever use any of their AI features for the reasons above. (I’ve literally uninstalled Windows now, it’s gotten so bad.)
- neogodless 8mo ago
  Tragically, capitalism drives corporate behavior. Whatever works for large numbers is what will happen. But overall, you and I (and many) will try to push back and insist on consent. The sign-up form with an unchecked "sign me up for your newsletter" option. The first-run experience with a question... "do you want us to notify you of new features?" But this is not the norm, and even if good actors get rewarded by a few childish customers, bad actors seem to get rewarded much more by a massive infusion of funds.
- 8mo ago
Kalpaka 8mo ago
[dead]
josefritzishere 8mo ago
An AI kill switch is my most-wanted feature. AI is equally terrible and pervasive.
hermanzegerman 8mo ago
I would prefer it, if the basics, like being able to use your Webcam would work. That's broken for a while now on Fedora/Linux
- phs318u 8mo ago
  Works for me on CachyOS and previously Pop-OS.
- aryonoco 8mo ago
  Used my webcam just fine multiple times today on Fedora Silverblue.
  - hermanzegerman 8mo ago
    I'm using the Standard Mutable Version. But maybe I should try replacing the shipped Firefox, with the Flatpak one. Right now I'm switching to Chromium for Video Calls, which I hate
cl0ckt0wer 8mo ago
Firefox already captured the developer audience, and it wasn't enough. So they pivoted to whatever they thought of to increase mainstream adoption. That is really alienating that developer audience though.
- sethops1 8mo ago
  Firefox had mainstream adoption in the Firefox 2 era, before Chrome launched. What drew people to Chrome was that it was fast, efficient, and did I mention fast? Unfortunately all browsers today seem to have forgotten how important that is.
  - zitterbewegung 8mo ago
    The whole purpose of Chrome is to have google search by default in people's browsers. Once they have a large market share nothing else really matters. If people truly cared about speed Google would have changed it already.
  - acheron 8mo ago
    What drew people to Chrome is that Google leveraged their search monopoly to push it, and paid other software to sneak it into installers.
mhher 8mo ago
Am I the only one who absolutely adores the local based translation feature? I use it regularly and its so good.
- NoboruWataya 8mo ago
  Yes, I really like it. I wish they let extensions access it directly but it seems they don't (yet, at least). I'm also a bit surprised more hasn't been done to distribute it separately as a command line tool as I think something like that would be very helpful. I have seen a couple of attempts to put a CLI wrapper around it but they are third-party and seem to not be well maintained or documented.
  - deltoidmaximus 8mo ago
    Some one up thread pointed out about:translations is where it seems to be hidden. Also a fan of this feature. It's actually been around awhile but I think the Asian languages are a more recent addition.
j1436go 8mo ago
I switched to LibreWolf, use uBlock Origin and have modified the web search so it uses noai.duckduckgo.com and appends -ai to every Google search query. I'm rather happy with this setup.
- zenoprax 8mo ago
  I wasn't aware of the "-ai" flags. Good to know. Do you have a preferred way of blocking domains from appearing in search results? I think there's a limit of only five for some reason.
  - baggachipz 8mo ago
    > Do you have a preferred way of blocking domains from appearing in search results? Paying for Kagi which lets you promote/demote/block domains to your heart's content.
    - GoatInGrey 8mo ago
      [flagged]
      - PufPufPuf 8mo ago
        Yep, that's them. https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1gvcqua/psa_the_kagi_search_engine_directly_funds_yandex/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1gvcqua/psa_the_ka...
      - baggachipz 8mo ago
        The actual context, which I think frames it rather well: > The job of a search engine is to produce the most relevant search results, period. Kagi excels at this precisely because we remain unimpressed by world politics. The moment 'politics' becomes a factor in search results is the moment I stop working on a search engine. Yandex represents about 2% of our total costs and is only one of dozens of sources we use. To put this in perspective: removing any single source would degrade search quality for all users while having minimal economic impact on any particular region. We set out to fix search, not the world. A truly useful search engine must be impartial - the same way Wikipedia strives for neutrality, or how a library doesn't curate books based on current political winds. Users deserve access to the best possible information, not information filtered through our political lens.
noisy_boy 8mo ago
I re-tried Firefox couple of weeks ago, in the latest episode of a series of tries to "finally" migrating to it. Same CPU fans blowing like jet engines randomly. None of that with Vivaldi (which is anyway all Chromium/Blink underneath) - so came back to it. Firefox has so many nice things like containers but basic performance issues are still unresolved.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- cbull 8mo ago
  I think that depends on what sites you are using/things you are doing with it. The only time the fans turn on for me is one specific dashboard in Home Assistant. Nothing else I connect to even moves the needle on temperature/CPU use
Ms-J 8mo ago
It is such a shame where Firefox is and is headed these days. It could have been a browser for the people, instead it's an advertising machine, similar to Chrome. Icecat/Iceweasel are sane alternatives. Unofficial binaries can be found: https://icecatbrowser.org/download.html https://icecatbrowser.org/download.html Official source: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuzilla.git https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuzilla.git
MarcLore 8mo ago
[dead]
duxup 8mo ago
Can I turn off Firefox's AI? I keep bumping that button on mobile and it's killing my experience.
TheTriunePrism 8mo ago
"The 'AI Kill Switch' in Firefox 148 is not just a feature; it's an architectural statement on Agency. Most platforms today operate on a 'Seed-to-Harvest' model where the user is merely the soil for data collection. By allowing a hard-disable of AI functionalities, we are seeing the emergence of a 'Watchman' architecture—one that prioritizes the user's right to define 'Value' beyond algorithmic efficiency. We need more systems that respect the 'Seed' (the origin of choice) rather than just maximizing the output."

464 points by shaunpud 8mo ago

dras227 8mo ago

[dead]

shablulman 8mo ago

[flagged]

dvhh 8mo ago

If I wanted a browser with AI, I would have used Chrome or Edge

yibers 8mo ago

Step 1: Launch AI features Step 2: Launch AI features kill switch Step 3: ???? Step 4: Profit?

shevy-java 8mo ago
Yeah, Mozilla made us do an additional step here. Before, we did not need to disable AI stuff. Now Mozilla forced us (that is those of us who don't like or use AI) into an extra step. Guess the only thing worse is being given no choice at all though.
glenstein 8mo ago
Search licensing that Mozilla currently depends on might become eclipsed by AI so it's important to ahead of the game whatever it might end up being.

RockstarSprain 8mo ago

I wish there were some updates about PWA support. Haven’t heard about progress on this since last August. Is it still in beta and only available on Windows?

cozzyd 8mo ago

Will it render &em; as &en; ?

mock-possum 8mo ago
Why would it to that? -, –, and — are all different things.

bartvk 8mo ago

Firefox is the only holdout against the ad companies, and I'm counting Microsoft amongst those. It's a very good browser, independent with its own renderer, with decent ad blocking and decent performance. It continually amazes me how people use a Google product on their desktop, as if they don't send enough data to an ad company. Actually, I'm not sure why I type this, any rational arguments are definitely not winning them over.

Aeglaecia 8mo ago
[flagged]
- throwmeoutplzdo 8mo ago
  You’re mixing up funding with control. Mozilla Corporation takes money from Google for search placement. That doesn’t turn it into a subsidiary. Google doesn’t own it, doesn’t run its roadmap, and doesn’t ship its code. Mozilla negotiates search deals the same way Apple does for Safari. Revenue deal ≠ corporate control. On telemetry: you’re overstating it. Firefox ships with telemetry on, but it documents what it collects, lets users turn it off, and exposes most of it in about:config. Google Chrome ties into a much broader account system, sync stack, and ad network. Chrome doesn’t operate in isolation; it plugs straight into Google’s data ecosystem. Firefox doesn’t own an ad network to feed. “Almost comparable” needs evidence. Comparable how? Volume? Type? Identifiability? Retention? Without specifics, the claim collapses into vibes. The bigger difference sits lower in the stack: engine independence. Firefox runs on Gecko. Chrome runs on Blink. If you care about web monoculture, that matters more than marginal telemetry deltas. When one engine dominates, web standards start drifting toward what that engine implements. We watched that happen in the IE6 era. As for uBlock Origin: yes, it’s a major reason people choose Firefox. But browser architecture shapes how long powerful content blockers survive. Chrome’s extension model changes (Manifest V3) restrict what blockers can do. Firefox kept the older, more capable API. That choice signals priorities. If your argument reduces to “both collect some data, so it doesn’t matter,” you flatten meaningful differences. The question isn’t purity. The question asks who controls the engine, who sets extension policy, and who benefits from surveillance at scale. If you think those differences don’t matter, make that case directly. But don’t blur structural distinctions into “basically the same.” They’re not.

TeMPOraL 8mo ago

I'm torn on whether to see this "AI Kill switch" as a win on respecting the users, or something to keep us distractewd while they ship through "Trusted Types" API that sounds like further restriction of end-user computing freedoms.

LiamPowell 8mo ago
I would absolutely love to hear your reasoning that leads to type systems being considered a "restriction of end-user computing freedoms". For those that don't know what trusted types are: Simply put, it splits the string type in to unsanitised_string_from_user and safe_escaped_string where unsafe strings can not be used in function parameters that only take a safe string That's heavily simplifying of course, but it's the basic idea.
- TeMPOraL 8mo ago
  Skimming the API docs on MDN, it makes sure the site vendor gets to run filtering code over anything you'd want to inject via e.g. user script or console, securing it with CSP. I expect this to make user scripts work as well as they do on Chrome now. If there's a workaround, I'd love to hear about it.
  - LiamPowell 8mo ago
    Worst case you just run your userscript before any policies are created, but in most cases it's not going to impact userscripts.
  - duskdozer 8mo ago
    Oh just great. The web is bad enough already, I think I'll have to go live in the woods if userscripts get kneecapped
debugnik 8mo ago
Aren't those just overengineered sanitizers?

aquir 8mo ago

I don't know...at one point I got off Firefox because it was slow and I was never able to get back to it ever again. Maybe I should try now?

zargon 8mo ago
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.
- PunchyHamster 8mo ago
  Mozilla did plant the tree 20 years ago, then decided few years after to abandon it
  - glenstein 8mo ago
    They push millions of lines of code every year, thousands of patches and all kinds of measurable performance improvements so not sure what you're talking about.
    - PunchyHamster 8mo ago
      the 2% marketshare. I'm talking about 2% marketshare that they got from being de-facto standard, to 2%
      - glenstein 8mo ago
        At their peak it was like 33% or thereabouts. The claim that they were "abandoned" suggests, well, that the browser was abandoned when it wasn't. It's a mischaracterization. Market share is about some combination of (1) software quality, (2) visibility and (3) distribution lock in. Chrome managed to be arguably better on (1) but it's due to (2) and (3) that it became dominant. If (1) was all that mattered we would all be using the Preso engine version of Opera right now.
        8mo ago

trainyperson 8mo ago

This just blocks AI features within Firefox. The feature I would really want here is a switch that blocks AI summaries, overviews, etc. on any websites you browse.

monegator 8mo ago
Unsurprisingly, ublock is still the best extension to do that, there are community driven lists that hide summaries and spam websites.
greazy 8mo ago
That's the job of uBlock origin. Eg here's a list https://github.com/laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist#ublockorigin--ublacklist-huge-ai-blocklist https://github.com/laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist#...
Itoldmyselfso 8mo ago
Much of the content online is already AI generated, and many websites have their code AI generated, so you'd soon be left with nothing but blank pages. :)
- SkyeCA 8mo ago
  I'd rather blank pages than consume literal slop.
Deukhoofd 8mo ago
That's massively out of scope for a browser, that sounds like something for an extension.
snowhale 8mo ago
[dead]

shevy-java 8mo ago

Why wasn't this there from the get go? Many people dislike the AI spam; I do too. I use chrome-based browsers usually (I also hate how dependent I have become on Google; default firefox refuses to play audio on my linux system as they claim we need pulseaudio, chrome instead makes no such assumption and audio plays just fine, so one can go and figure out why mozilla acts worse than Google here - all the google-bribe money killed its THINKING ability), so when I do, I use a few extensions such as "disable AI overview" or similar. It is annoying that we have to invest time in order to uncripple the world wide web. Browser vendors should be much more responsible, from the get go. But they all want to jump on the hype train, to milk out more money. Greed is the driving theme nowadays. (They could offer AI based on people who want or need that, rather than cram it down onto everyone.)

BrenBarn 8mo ago
> Why wasn't this there from the get go? Even better, why was the AI feature ever added in the first place?
- tgv 8mo ago
  Because a browser needs users, and some people like AI features. Firefox can't win the battle, or even survive, on an AI hating, nerdy user base.
- Xylakant 8mo ago
  Quite a few of the LLM features actually add value for a certain group of users. Automated image descriptions for the visually impaired, automatic translation, ... Running those on local models is a net benefit for quite a few people, but they get a bad rep because they're "AI" and the current trend of shoving AI everyplace and with no means of escape means that AI in general has a - well deserved - bad reputation.

feverzsj 8mo ago

That's why I use Helium now.

signa11 8mo ago
yet another chromium clone iirc.
- feverzsj 8mo ago
  It's basically ungoogled-chromium with manifest v2 support. Chromium is just technically superior than Firefox. It's a simple fact. The problem is the telemetry and AI features they added in it, which Helium or ungoogled-chromium doesn't have.
  - lpcvoid 8mo ago
    >It's a simple fact I'd love to hear why you say this.
    - signa11 8mo ago
      > It's a simple fact one mans fact, is another ones fodder :o)

krelian 8mo ago

[flagged]

joncfoo 8mo ago
Be nicer. You could’ve sufficed with: > It's good that they've added an option to disable them for those who don’t want to use or see them.

Satuminus 8mo ago

Good. I was fearing Firefox would also end up having too many AI-Features i do not want. But switching to Chromium-Browsers isnt an option anyways because of their Manifest V3 extension model. Restricting blockers? Whats next?

SapporoChris 8mo ago

[flagged]

CorrectHorseBat 8mo ago
It's not all bad is it? On device translation of websites for example is much better than the alternatives.
- ori_b 8mo ago
  Until very recently, on device translation was not marketed as AI.
  - TeMPOraL 8mo ago
    On device or not, it's a transformer model, so some view it as tainted.
  - Kuinox 8mo ago
    Yet translation was the main application for applied language machine learning.
    - TeMPOraL 8mo ago
      When would've thought that to solve natural language translation, one would first need to solve... natural language. All those arguments about agents and hallucinations kind of distracted people from noticing we've accodentally built a universal translator.
      - Kuinox 8mo ago
        It's been at least 10 years that google translate had hallucinations. Some translation simply change depending of a ponctuation mark. But peoples complain only now that they heard about AI. Of course it's not perfect, but I agree that we didn't had a machine translation as good before.
      - 8mo ago

sickmartian 8mo ago

Great, let's see how it works out. Firefox for Android has been killing it for me with the latest ux updates, I didn't expect major improvements there and was pleasantly surprised.

dbdr 8mo ago
Which UX improvements in particular?
conradfr 8mo ago
I don't see the appeal, it takes more "clicks" to do many actions and I had to disable the ridiculous new oversized "rectangle tab preview block" (whatever it's called).
- _s_a_m_ 8mo ago
  yes exactly, their design was already better than chrome and condensed but now we have these outdated round and padding heavy toy controls again, just why?
_s_a_m_ 8mo ago
I actually liked the previous UI much more, the new one looks like a baby toy and uses more space because of the control padding. completely unnecessary.
raybb 8mo ago
This UI is great but do you get this horrible thing where sometimes the browser is shows a white screen and you have to force stop the app? Happens all the time on the latest version for my Pixel 9a. And did on my Pixel 7 too before. It's really horrible and I can't pin down any rhythm or reason other than loosely seeming to happen more often when I'm in battery saver mode.
- Zardoz84 8mo ago
  not happens on my Poco
- 8mo ago

altairprime 8mo ago

Ironically, I bet that a significant majority of the users that turn on the AI kill switch — which must have some kind of phone-home telematics attached — will also be users who have disabled Firefox metrics collection and so will not have their opinion counted. So, the most effective path here for y’all to be heard is not flipping the switch off yourself (do so anyways!) — anyone who cares at this stage has probably opted out of being counted already, after all — but instead to ensure that news of this switch spreads to absolutely as many non-tech people as possible. Don’t argue that they should run some script that shuts off their metrics and phone home and updates. Just convince them to shut off the AI and explain that this is why their browser got slow about a year ago! They’ll flip off the switch gleefully, their phone-home will count them, and y’all will have the strongest possible impact on the telematics graphs at Mozilla. I already ran the disable process manually on the computers I have friends and family IT duties towards, so I’ll go back and do the AI switch to be sure it’s counted next week. Yes, this is a crap way to be heard. But making a mark on feature opt-out graphs is probably the only hope we have left to get their executive leadership to stop drowning the browser for its own good.

themafia 8mo ago
> will also be users who have disabled Firefox metrics collection and so will not have their opinion counted. Gee. If only there was a way to collect users opinions on things. Welp.. guess we have to live with subtly spying on everything they do with our software.
- supriyo-biswas 8mo ago
  If we replaced telemetry with some sort of survey emails and phone calls, we'd get exactly another 500-thread discussion on HN about how "Mozilla is collecting emails to sell to the highest bidder!", "Mozilla is sending us spam!" and whatnot.
- godelski 8mo ago
  Most people aren't vocal. Most people who are vocal aren't representative of users. Many vocal people aren't even users. Don't get me wrong, I turn off telemetry, but you're acting like it's easy to get that information. You act like people don't scream when Firefox prompts people with surveys. You act like there isn't bias in survey takers. If you just pretend everything is easy we'll just end up reinventing the same evils we're trying to fight today. Unfortunately most evils are created from good intentions. I hear there's an entire road paved that way

bpavuk 8mo ago

last time when I updated Firefox, the package manager began building ONNX Runtime from source, which my "minuscule" 16GB of RAM couldn't handle. I want that during install time, as I don't like the idea of rebuilding ONNX every time Firefox updates, period.

charcircuit 8mo ago
That is an issue with your OS. Your OS vendor should be precompiling everything for you.
Zardoz84 8mo ago
Gentoo ?
- bpavuk 8mo ago
  no, NixOS Unstable. normally, they precompile such stuff, but ONNX decided that it wants to link against my ROCm instance specifically. looks like soon we will have to resort to dirty workarounds akin to those in Blender (HIP, CUDA support)

snowhale 8mo ago

[dead]

Xylakant 8mo ago
People vehemently asked for a kill switch that does exactly that - kill off all AI-related features. I quite like the local LLM translations etc., but jedem Tierchen sein Plaisierchen, as they say over here.
- duskdozer 8mo ago
  Seems like willful disregard of the fact that "AI" has been now pushed as synonymous with chatbots, "AI summaries", LLM text generation when convenient, but then at criticism, it goes back to "oh but machine translators are AI too".
TeMPOraL 8mo ago
Thing is, there's a large (or at least certainly vocal) contingent of users (and mostly techies, to boot) that view "AI" as the Devil, and transformer models as the original sin, and they want to refuse to partake, wholesale. This feature seems to be a nod to people with this worldview. EDIT: See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47133786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47133786 liking AI features to defecating on your food. It's not a technical objection, it's a principled one.
- ryandrake 8mo ago
  I figure, hey, at least Mozilla listened and provided the opt-out. It could be worse. I also happen to be in the "food defecating analogy" camp, and I can give the developer an unenthusiastic thumbs up for at least listening to the peanut gallery this time. Ideally they wouldn't make the product bad, with a badness opt-out, in the first place, but everyone in Silicon Valley's got to feed the AI monkey. So I guess this is the best we can expect.
  - TeMPOraL 8mo ago

nullsanity 8mo ago

[flagged]

Aeglaecia 8mo ago
i intended to ask what the difference was between two browsers that are both beholden to a company whose express goal is to suck up personal data. so far ive gotten vitriol, AI, and downvotes. my actual question remains unanswered. if you'd like to answer the question that would be cool! but yeah if you dont want to answer , it'd probably be easier to say nothing than to tell me to die alone
jahsome 8mo ago
I was being sincere, my friend. I genuinely envy that worldview. I long for it. I wish above nearly all else I could reset. I was being authentic and vulnerable. Why does that infuriate you? Read your statement again and tell me who the pessimist is, and who is most in need of a break from the internet.
- debugnik 8mo ago
  You envy the worldview in which people back their opinions with actual arguments?
  - jahsome 8mo ago
    I envy the worldview it's possible someone can take money from another and still maintain independence. What's up with the straw men?
    - debugnik 8mo ago
      > What's up with the avalanche of straw men? Poor quality comments lead to poor quality replies. I won't deny mine is as well.
      - deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]

nuker 8mo ago

Is there disable auto-update setting in GUI? Last time i looked there was none and i had to create some settings.json file for that.

shultays 8mo ago

Probably not enough for AI haters, we need separate executables with kill switch already triggered!

lpcvoid 8mo ago
That would be better, yeah. Ideally some #ifdefs that I can configure to remove all the slop from the binary itself ;)
- account42 8mo ago
  Really all this bloat should just be extensions instead of part of the base browser code base.

fleroviumna 8mo ago

[dead]

akimbostrawman 8mo ago

Another opt out anti feature. Luckily better forks like Mullvad Browser and LibreWolf exist that actually deliver what Firefox promises.

ddxv 8mo ago

Where are the AI features in Firefox? Looking around right now the only one I see is right click tab -> Summarize page (NEW). I googled a bit and see they have some grouping of tabs feature I've never used/seen (or want). The only other maybe AI feature I remember seeing is the odd left hand bar that is there on fresh installs and I usually remove to declutter. Are those the features this kill switch removes or was there a deeper issue here?

godelski 8mo ago
There's also a side window you can open that can connect to a chatbot. There's translation (on device). Also semantic history search.
mrklol 8mo ago
Firefox mentions the following ones: "- Translations, which help you browse the web in your preferred language. - Alt text in PDFs, which add accessibility descriptions to images in PDF pages. - AI-enhanced tab grouping, which suggests related tabs and group names. - Link previews, which show key points before you open a link. - AI chatbot in the sidebar, which lets you use your chosen chatbot as you browse, including options like Anthropic Claude, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini and Le Chat Mistral."
- mort96 8mo ago
  I wonder what sort of user testing made them decide that what Firefox users really need is a chat bot in the site bar. Isn't a chat bot in a tab good enough? And calling translation "AI" seems like deceitful retroactive rebranding. Why is machine translation suddenly "AI" now? It was never branded as such before. Is "AI" here just used to mean machine learning?
  - johnnyanmac 8mo ago
    Wouldn't be the first time. Google gave an option to turn off gemini in Gmail, and suddenly the inbox tabs they had for over a decade decided to disappear.

godelski 8mo ago

Firefox does what some people want, people complain. Firefox does what other people want, people complain. Firefox does what both people want, people complain. I'm sorry, but we'll never get corporations to do what we want if we don't throw them the smallest bone when we get our way. You need positive reinforcement too, not just negative. If it's all negative they just stop caring and you get companies lot Google who just don't give a shit anymore. And yes, there are some AI features I like and I want in the browser. I get a lot of utility out of translation as well as semantic search of my history. I don't want agents in my browser but get, Firefox is giving us choices. Look, no one needs to like Firefox, but let's also be honest, it's the best we got right now. Google, Apple, and Microsoft are shoving agents down our throats and putting us in walled gardens that are getting harder and harder to break from. I don't care what flavor of chromium you use, Google is still using it to control the way the web works. Everyone loves to say how chromium is has greater coverage of standards but never takes a second to question who sets those standards. I'm sorry guys, that's the state of things now. You can't fight Google by switching to chromium. It's still their vehicle to eat the internet. Our choices right now are Safari, Firefox, and maybe ladybird. It's slim pickings and nothing is close to perfect. At this point it doesn't even matter if Mozilla is evil, because at least they're the enemy of our enemy. Google is keeping them on life support to avoid monopoly claims but how long will they need that? So what, we're just going to hand the keys of the kingdom to the guys selling artisian turd sandwiches because what, there isn't enough mayo on your ham sandwich? Because you don't like ham? We got a win. Celebrate. Take the break from being cynical. There's bigger battles to fight and there'll be more tomorrow. Take the night off and don't be a sore winner

bartvk 8mo ago
Nowadays, I avoid certain topics. For instance any post about macOS becomes one giant complaint. Thanks for staying positive. I like Firefox, I think it's a very nice holdout against adware.
PunchyHamster 8mo ago
> So what, we're just going to hand the keys of the kingdom to the guys selling artisian turd sandwiches because what, there isn't enough mayo on your ham sandwich? Because you don't like ham? Firefox is the artisan turd sandwich. They are burning dev time on features barely anyone asked, while bleeding market share for last decade

orthoxerox 8mo ago

This is great news. I recently updated AMD Adrenalin, and the "minimal" version doesn't let you change the distribution of unified RAM on Strix Halo. I installed the "full" version, and it wanted me to install a 10GB "local AI assistant" to "help" me configure it. When I opened the program, it showed me a non-dismissable fake chat that occupied 25% of the screen, prompting me to click it and replace it with a real one. I remember when every other software prompted you to install Bonzi Buddy or some other intrusive search bar. This AI push is even worse.

jeisc 8mo ago

Now I need a switch for my smartphone and my computer too.

techpulse_x 8mo ago

[flagged]

fnord123 8mo ago

I don't mind the AI features per se, but is there a configuration setting to sent the traffic through a local AI Gateway to prevent the AI from receiving private information? At the very least to track what is sent over the wire.

fnord123 8mo ago
Found it: browser.ml.chat.provider

nextlevelwizard 8mo ago

Did they also fire the CEO who wanted to make Firefox into AI browser?

haritha-j 8mo ago

Welcome to 2026, where the biggest feature is the ability to turn off the AI they forced onto you.

jll29 8mo ago

In case you're looking for the opposite, not an AI "kill switch", but a propaganda kill switch using AI to fight disinformatiom, try BiasScanner: BiasScanner - Firefox Plug-In https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/bias-scanner/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/bias-scanner/ Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.10829 https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.10829

ItsBob 8mo ago

Maybe it's just me but why is it on by default? Why is this shit not off in the first place? Why can't Firefox just be a browser with great html, css, js rendering and then have a bunch of toggles for extra crap that people want? Do they actually have metrics that show "When we enable this crap by default we make an extra $X Million per year"? I'd put money on that being untrue. I bet it's like the data-driven ad spend - I've yet to see anything that proves that hoovering up bajillions of data points on each person moves the needle on spending beyond just showing a context-relevant ad, e.g. An ad for fishing gear on a blog post about fishing gear! Honestly, I feel more and more every day like old-man-shaking-fist-at-clouds! Can we not just have something that works without spying, without engagement-driven shit switched on all the fucking time? I think of the Simpsons Mr Brown meme where he's asking "Is it me that's wrong?". I can't be the only person that thinks this way!

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
aembleton 8mo ago
Sounds like LibreWolf would suit you better: https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/
sigmar 8mo ago
>Maybe it's just me but why is it on by default? Why is this shit not off in the first place? Because there would be millions of emails to support asking "why can't Firefox translate a page the same way chrome can?" from people that couldn't find the AI opt-in switch.
hypeatei 8mo ago
> Can we not just have something that works without spying, without engagement-driven shit switched on all the fucking time? Absolutely not! Making someone opt-in (the horror!) would result in too much confusion and support tickets! We can't ignore those tickets and tell people to figure it out, we have to cave and turn all the bullshit on by default. I think a lot of our problems can be explained by: corporations lacking a spine and people unwilling to learn about the computer they use everyday. It's basically unacceptable to not know how to change a tire if you own a car but clicking through some browser settings is too hard, I guess.

mmsc 8mo ago

In addition to completely disabling AI, I found the following setting extremely convinent to disable in about:config. They clutter up my right-click on a link or on text selection. browser.translations.select.enable dom.text_fragments.enabled privacy.query_stripping.strip_on_share.enabled devtools.accessibility.enabled Now if only I could get rid of "Print selection" and "Services" when right-clicking, too (on MacOS)

sunaookami 8mo ago
I wish we could also disable "Send via email" when right clicking a picture, I constantly misclick and userChrome.css does not work for the context menu on macOS since it's natively rendered...
- windowliker 8mo ago
  > userChrome.css does not work for the context menu on macOS Putting: #context-sendimage { display:none!important; } in that file works for me.
  - sunaookami 8mo ago
    Does not work on macOS, it uses native context menus that can't be styled via userChrome.css.
    - mmsc 8mo ago
      Try disabling widget.macos.native-context-menus
      - sunaookami 8mo ago
        That's what was missing, thank you!
    - windowliker 8mo ago
      > Does not work on macOS Yes it does.

karlkloss 8mo ago

Wake me when they add webserial.

carschno 8mo ago

The page seems to be a copy from the original Mozilla press release from February 2nd: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/ It was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46858492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46858492

stevekemp 8mo ago
Yeah flagged as a spammy source.

altern8 8mo ago

I love how AI's most-requested feature is always a way to completely disable it.

icf80 8mo ago

Meanwhile I still do not have the option to change/create the profile from menu. I kow about about:profiles but I dont have this: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/profile-management/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/profile-management/

AlienRobot 8mo ago
You can do this in Vivaldi if you don't want to use Chrome.
FranklinMaillot 8mo ago
It's finally there but you have to enable it in `about:config`. Search for `browser.profiles.enabled`.

hnarn 8mo ago

What an absolute dystopia when disabling AI is considered a "feature". Obviously the _enabling_ of it should be the "feature" if anything, and considering popular opinion there is absolutely no reason to enable it by default.

gkbrk 8mo ago
> considering popular opinion there is absolutely no reason to enable it by default You need to update your priors. The popular opinion is there is a reason to enable it by default. ChatGPT is the #5 most popular website in the world, more popular than Wikipedia, Reddit or Twitter. The vast majority of users want to use AI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-visited_websites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-visited_websites
- HWR_14 8mo ago
  And there is no YouTube, Facebook or Instagram (#2, #3, #4) default integration for Mozilla
  - gkbrk 8mo ago
    Firefox has YouTube integration of course. Here's a Firefox file [1] specifically for integrating YouTube videos into their picture-in-picture system. Your random video website won't get this treatment of course, need to be a popular one. Here's a piece of C++ code [2] in the Firefox engine that specifically rewrites old YouTube embeds from their old HTML embed snippet to the new one. Again, your own video website will never be so deeply integrated into Firefox because it's not a top 10 website. Firefox Readability mode makes pages more readable by removing useless stuff like videos. Unless it's a YouTube [3] or other top-N popular video website of course. YouTube videos are given special treatment because it's popular and having small integrations like this make the user experience better. [1]: https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/blob/1f43fe5ffadde0b6898daf607cabb3335dd75d6f/browser/extensions/pictureinpicture/video-wrappers/youtube.js https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/blob/1f43fe5ffadd... [2]: https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/blob/1f43fe5ffadde0b6898daf607cabb3335dd75d6f/dom/base/nsObjectLoadingContent.cpp#L506 https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/blob/1f43fe5ffadd... [3]: https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/blob/1f43fe5ffadde0b6898daf607cabb3335dd75d6f/toolkit/components/reader/readability/Readability.js#L2186 https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/blob/1f43fe5ffadd...

kittikitti 8mo ago

At this point, the industry wide decision to have AI as opt-out is suspicious. Why not have an AI opt-in default? It would certainly save so much trouble from the Luddites. On the other hand, an AI opt-in default would be not using any technology at all (where opting in would be turning on your computer or device) under a dictionary definition of artificial intelligence.

mfru 8mo ago

Please let whoever steers Thunderbird development and road map also steer Firefox. Thunderbird is at the moment the pinnacle of user-centered, focused and down-to-earth development of open-source software.

SV_BubbleTime 8mo ago
Can I replace Outlook yet? I don’t buy the “oh well, kinda sort of for like 60% of mail features and possibly a read only calendar in Two Weeks” I switched away from Thunderbird to Outlook TWO FULL DECADES AGO, and in that time they have never once given me a possibility to switch back. Like it or not, business runs on Office/Outlook.
setopt 8mo ago
That’s because Thunderbird is no longer part of Mozilla but an independent, community-developed project.
- reedciccio 8mo ago
  Thunderbird has been re-added to the products steered by the Mozilla Foundation. https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/11/the-untold-history-of-thunderbird/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/11/the-untold-history-of-t...
  - setopt 8mo ago
    I didn’t know that. Thanks for the update!
- 3OCSzk 8mo ago
  dubious, disingenuous claim.
elorant 8mo ago
Apart from the UI which is crap since their last major update. There are menu options everywhere, two ribbons on the top, a hamburger menu on the right and another on the left. For a long time you opened Thunderbird and it didn't default on the last message that you received but somewhere in the middle of the heap.

ninkendo 8mo ago

(This post is directed to all software that shoves features like this in my face, and especially Microsoft more than Firefox.) My problem with all software that shoves these AI features in my face, is that I don’t use features under duress. If you interrupt what I’m doing to push me to use a feature, I won’t use it. If you’re a web designer and you block the page to tell me to sign up for an account, I close the tab and vow to never create an account. If you stop what I’m doing to ask me to rate your app, I’m going to give it 1 star. Et cetera. Now I’ll be the first to admit this is childish… it’s a flaw in my character. When I feel pushed, I push back, and software pushing me makes me irrationally angry for reasons I can’t quite articulate. In some ways I wish I wasn’t like this. But I can’t be alone. I’m certain there is a non-negligible number of people like me, and when a browser immediately shoves AI features in my face on first launch, well, the first thing I’m going to do is disable them. The especially tragic part is that I personally find LLMs useful! And I’m at the point where I sorta want to install a Firefox extension for ChatGPT now. But the actual browser AI features were pushed on me in a way that made me feel violated, so I can’t use them on principle. Maybe in a few years I guess. If instead these companies would just dial it back several notches, I would have had the curiosity to try these features out myself, and I’d likely be using them by now. But the way they’ve tried so hard to force them on me has destroyed my trust and now, not only am I not using whatever feature they promote, I hate their product more than I otherwise would. Firefox isn’t actually that bad here, and now that there’s a simple kill switch, I may actually try their chatbot sidebar thing. But for companies like MS, I will never, ever, ever use any of their AI features for the reasons above. (I’ve literally uninstalled Windows now, it’s gotten so bad.)

neogodless 8mo ago
Tragically, capitalism drives corporate behavior. Whatever works for large numbers is what will happen. But overall, you and I (and many) will try to push back and insist on consent. The sign-up form with an unchecked "sign me up for your newsletter" option. The first-run experience with a question... "do you want us to notify you of new features?" But this is not the norm, and even if good actors get rewarded by a few childish customers, bad actors seem to get rewarded much more by a massive infusion of funds.
8mo ago

Kalpaka 8mo ago

[dead]

josefritzishere 8mo ago

An AI kill switch is my most-wanted feature. AI is equally terrible and pervasive.

hermanzegerman 8mo ago

I would prefer it, if the basics, like being able to use your Webcam would work. That's broken for a while now on Fedora/Linux

phs318u 8mo ago
Works for me on CachyOS and previously Pop-OS.
aryonoco 8mo ago
Used my webcam just fine multiple times today on Fedora Silverblue.
- hermanzegerman 8mo ago
  I'm using the Standard Mutable Version. But maybe I should try replacing the shipped Firefox, with the Flatpak one. Right now I'm switching to Chromium for Video Calls, which I hate

cl0ckt0wer 8mo ago

Firefox already captured the developer audience, and it wasn't enough. So they pivoted to whatever they thought of to increase mainstream adoption. That is really alienating that developer audience though.

sethops1 8mo ago
Firefox had mainstream adoption in the Firefox 2 era, before Chrome launched. What drew people to Chrome was that it was fast, efficient, and did I mention fast? Unfortunately all browsers today seem to have forgotten how important that is.
- zitterbewegung 8mo ago
  The whole purpose of Chrome is to have google search by default in people's browsers. Once they have a large market share nothing else really matters. If people truly cared about speed Google would have changed it already.
- acheron 8mo ago
  What drew people to Chrome is that Google leveraged their search monopoly to push it, and paid other software to sneak it into installers.

mhher 8mo ago

Am I the only one who absolutely adores the local based translation feature? I use it regularly and its so good.

NoboruWataya 8mo ago
Yes, I really like it. I wish they let extensions access it directly but it seems they don't (yet, at least). I'm also a bit surprised more hasn't been done to distribute it separately as a command line tool as I think something like that would be very helpful. I have seen a couple of attempts to put a CLI wrapper around it but they are third-party and seem to not be well maintained or documented.
- deltoidmaximus 8mo ago
  Some one up thread pointed out about:translations is where it seems to be hidden. Also a fan of this feature. It's actually been around awhile but I think the Asian languages are a more recent addition.

j1436go 8mo ago

I switched to LibreWolf, use uBlock Origin and have modified the web search so it uses noai.duckduckgo.com and appends -ai to every Google search query. I'm rather happy with this setup.

zenoprax 8mo ago
I wasn't aware of the "-ai" flags. Good to know. Do you have a preferred way of blocking domains from appearing in search results? I think there's a limit of only five for some reason.
- baggachipz 8mo ago
  > Do you have a preferred way of blocking domains from appearing in search results? Paying for Kagi which lets you promote/demote/block domains to your heart's content.
  - GoatInGrey 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    - PufPufPuf 8mo ago
      Yep, that's them. https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1gvcqua/psa_the_kagi_search_engine_directly_funds_yandex/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1gvcqua/psa_the_ka...
    - baggachipz 8mo ago
      The actual context, which I think frames it rather well: > The job of a search engine is to produce the most relevant search results, period. Kagi excels at this precisely because we remain unimpressed by world politics. The moment 'politics' becomes a factor in search results is the moment I stop working on a search engine. Yandex represents about 2% of our total costs and is only one of dozens of sources we use. To put this in perspective: removing any single source would degrade search quality for all users while having minimal economic impact on any particular region. We set out to fix search, not the world. A truly useful search engine must be impartial - the same way Wikipedia strives for neutrality, or how a library doesn't curate books based on current political winds. Users deserve access to the best possible information, not information filtered through our political lens.

noisy_boy 8mo ago

I re-tried Firefox couple of weeks ago, in the latest episode of a series of tries to "finally" migrating to it. Same CPU fans blowing like jet engines randomly. None of that with Vivaldi (which is anyway all Chromium/Blink underneath) - so came back to it. Firefox has so many nice things like containers but basic performance issues are still unresolved.

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
cbull 8mo ago
I think that depends on what sites you are using/things you are doing with it. The only time the fans turn on for me is one specific dashboard in Home Assistant. Nothing else I connect to even moves the needle on temperature/CPU use

Ms-J 8mo ago

It is such a shame where Firefox is and is headed these days. It could have been a browser for the people, instead it's an advertising machine, similar to Chrome. Icecat/Iceweasel are sane alternatives. Unofficial binaries can be found: https://icecatbrowser.org/download.html https://icecatbrowser.org/download.html Official source: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuzilla.git https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuzilla.git

MarcLore 8mo ago

[dead]

duxup 8mo ago

Can I turn off Firefox's AI? I keep bumping that button on mobile and it's killing my experience.

TheTriunePrism 8mo ago

"The 'AI Kill Switch' in Firefox 148 is not just a feature; it's an architectural statement on Agency. Most platforms today operate on a 'Seed-to-Harvest' model where the user is merely the soil for data collection. By allowing a hard-disable of AI functionalities, we are seeing the emergence of a 'Watchman' architecture—one that prioritizes the user's right to define 'Value' beyond algorithmic efficiency. We need more systems that respect the 'Seed' (the origin of choice) rather than just maximizing the output."