Here’s what we’re working on in Firefox

[Jon]

At Mozilla, we work hard to make Firefox the best browser for you. That’s why we're always focused on building a browser that empowers you to choose your own path, that gives you the freedom to explore without worry or compromises. We’re excited to share more about the updates and improvements we have in store for you over the next year.

Bringing You the Features You’ve Been Asking For

We've been listening to your feedback, and we're prioritizing the features you want most.

• Productivity boosters like
• Tab Grouping, Vertical Tabs, and our handy Sidebar will help you stay organized no matter how many tabs you have open -- whether it’s 7 or 7,500. 
• Plus, our new Profile Management system will help keep your school, work, and personal browsing separate but easily accessible. 
• Customizable new tab wallpapers that will let you choose from a diverse range of photography, colors, and abstract images that suits you most. 
• Intuitive privacy settings that deliver all the power of our world-class anti-tracking technologies in a simplified, easy-to-understand way.
• More streamlined menus that reduce visual clutter and prioritize top user actions so you can get to the important things quicker.

Continuous work on Speed, Performance, and Compatibility

Speed is everything when you’re online, so we're continuing to work hard to make Firefox as fast and efficient as possible. You can expect even faster, smoother browsing on Firefox, thanks to quicker page loads and startup times – all while saving more of your phone’s battery life. We’ve already improved responsiveness by 20 percent as measured by Speedometer 3, a collaboration we’ve spearheaded with other leading tech companies. And in that collaborative spirit, we’re also working with the Interop project to make it easy for people to build sites that work great across all browsers. We value your support in our efforts to improve cross-browser compatibility which is why we’ve added new features to easily report when websites aren’t working quite right; this feedback is critical as we look to address even small functionality issues that affect your day-to-day online experience.

Making the Most of Your Time Online -- without Sacrifice

Ensuring your privacy is core to everything we do at Firefox. Unlike other companies, who ask you to exchange your data in order to do even basic, everyday things online -- you don’t have to give up your personal information to get a faster, more efficient browser experience with Firefox. Reading a news story in a different language or signing a form for school or work shouldn't require you to give up your privacy. So, we've worked hard to make things like translation and PDF editing in Firefox happen locally on your device, so you don’t have to ship off your personal data to a server farm for a company to use it how they see fit -- to keep tabs on you, sell your information to the highest bidder, or train their AI. With Firefox, you have a lot of choice -- but you don’t have to choose between utility and privacy. Your data is secure, and most importantly, just yours.

We are approaching the use of AI in Firefox -- which many, many of you have been asking about -- in the same way. We’re focused on giving you AI features that solve tangible problems, respect your privacy, and give you real choice.

We’re looking at how we can use local, on-device AI models -- i.e., more private -- to enhance your browsing experience further. One feature we’re starting with next quarter is AI-generated alt-text for images inserted into PDFs, which makes it more accessible to visually impaired users and people with learning disabilities. The alt text is then processed on your device and saved locally instead of cloud services, ensuring that enhancements like these are done with your privacy in mind.

Join Us on This Journey

Our progress is driven by a vibrant community of users and developers like you. We encourage you to contribute to our open-source projects and to engage with us on here on Mozilla Connect or Discourse, and don't miss our upcoming AMA on Reddit, which we’ll announce soon. Your participation is crucial in shaping what Firefox becomes next.

[dcaravana]

@JonWith every new Firefox release, one thing that constantly bugs me is how poor the release notes are (sorry!) compared to the sheer number of tickets closed with that release, usually thousand of them.

I have complained some time ago to no avail https://twitter.com/dcaravana/status/1511356454145507328 .

I understand you have to keep it simple, but understating the amount of hard work that goes into each Firefox release does not seems too smart either, unfair to say the least.

You need to find a balance.

Consider it a "feature" of the new Firefox maybe?

[matthiew]

Please, please, please do tab grouping in an automatic tree structure a la Tree Style Tabs or Sidebery 🙏

Every other browser makes tab grouping a manual process. It would be a huge win if you have automatic tab grouping!

[DavidRegev]

Yes, automatic! That’s what what I was referring to above. I have an algorithm that truly solves tab management. Imagine if Firefox had that instead of Chrome!

[Caffeine]

Thanks for the update! I'm especially glad that you're working on native tab groups and better support of multiple profiles. Both features that I'm really missing since I moved back to Firefox.

Will the improvement of multiple profiles also fix this issue? It would be really great if links clicked outside of Firefox open in the last active profile / window. That would improve my productivity a lot 😊

Thank you very much! 🙌

[Jon]

Thanks for the feedback - and hey welcome back to Firefox! I'll pass this feedback along to the profiles team. We also have this idea thread here for profile management, if you want to share any additional feedback: shortcut for different profiles 

[hylozoik]

REQUEST: Native Bottom-Tabs-Option please! Thank You! 🙂

[SpringCatalogue]

I used stuff like this with tab mix plus up until firefox 28. use vertical tabs.
you probably could do this with CSS. unless you're already doing it.

[Ponda]

It's amazing to hear, I waited for some of these features a long time! It's also great that you'll put more effort in making Firefox faster and consume less resources. It really feels like Mozilla has a new management that actually cares about Firefox and not just weird side projects.

[wutongtaiwan]

The more streamlined menu you mentioned is not necessarily a benefit. There are many useful functions hidden in about:config. Users want to use them but don't know how to enable them because you don't have detailed documentation about about:config. So I hope that as you make the menus more streamlined, you will reveal some useful features into the settings. For example, when I enter text in the search box, the text will appear in the address bar, which is very annoying, so I hope you can display the switches of these functions in the settings. In addition, the switch for intercepting fingerprint functions should also be displayed in the settings.

[Agentvirtuel]

Hello

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/i-want-instructions-for-about-config/idi-p/55295
Other https://searchfox.org/mozilla-release/source/browser/app/profile/firefox.js

---

// The pref controls if search hand-off is enabled for Activity Stream.
pref("browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.handoffToAwesomebar", true);

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1447009

[wutongtaiwan]

I know how to use about:config to allow me to type text in the search box instead of in the address bar, but not everyone knows how to do that. To make it easier for the user to use, a switch should be added to the settings

[yermulnik]

I 100% support the need for UI switch option for this feature.

I hated this feature and accidentally got to know from this thread how to turn it off.

[JEG]

Good to hear about progress, but quite disappointing that restoring PWA SSB (installable web apps) support is not in development. It is the second most user-requested feature in Connect, ahead of vertical tabs! 

[Spike]

I have to say its disappointing that you choose Vertical tabs when there is 1 or 2 excellent extensions that do that already

There is a reason others done their implementation of horizontal tab and its simple as the monitors and resolution favors more horizontal screen space and not vertical ones

So a solution like Vivaldi would be way better

[yermulnik]

I hope vertical tabs is just an option to complement horizontal tabs with grouping feature.

I'd love tab names to be readable, which is a piece of crap with vertical tabs IMO.

[Jon]

Thanks for the feedback! We'll be sharing more about vertical tabs here soon — stay tuned.

[nado-x]

Ref: Bring back PWA (progressive web apps)

The PWA was supposedly "upgraded" to "In Review" well over 2 years ago, "which means it will be brought to our internal teams for review".   So the Mozilla internal teams have been reviewing it for over 24 months..   How can anyone take this seriously when they don't even communicate the current status?  Have they said ANYTHING about it?  At this point it would be better to just say it's not happening, because that's what seems to be reality.

Whether or not PWA is a standard or not, it's a way for a lot of us to use Teams, Outlook, Spotify and many other web apps - this applies to Windows, MacOS and yes even those *sarcasm* pesky Linux users.

I really want to be on team Mozilla, but they make it incredibly hard for me to support them when their idea of improving the web browser is to add features such as "Colorways".

[JEG]

Totally agree. I want to use and root for Firefox, but no PWA SSB support is a deal breaker for me. And life is pretty good on Edge. Edge makes installing webapps so easy. 

[Nich]

So sorry, pwa is a very popular feature, Jon, can you answer if pwa support is being developed, is it on the roadmap?

[nado-x]

Doesn't look like it, or we would have heard something on the Ideas page.  😞

[jomatom]

Tab grouping is nice, but we urgently need workspaces!! 🙏🏼

Opera One workspaces e.g. are great, but it misses the ability to filter browser history entries by single workspace/s.

[Jon]

Thanks @jomatom - this is another popular request here on Connect. Feel free to check out this idea that also mentions how Opera has implemented workspaces: Workspaces à la Opera 

[jomatom]

I added this style to my UserChrome.css for extensions inside the toolbar, so that they stand out from the default toolbar buttons. If placed next to each other they form groups. I also minimized the width of the 'flexible space'. I'd really like to see a toolbar button group feature implemented in Firefox by default.

[radutomy]

No PWA? Come on Mozilla, I really want to stop using Chrome once and for all.

[jomatom]

You can try this extension: https://pwasforfirefox.filips.si/ / https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/pwas-for-firefox/

[radutomy]

I know about that extension, it has serious limitations and it's nowhere near as good as the Chrome equivalent.

[Jon]

Jumping in here real quick to let you know that one of our Firefox Product Managers is currently hosting a discussion thread here on Connect about how we can best support web apps—and of course you're all invited to join and share your feedback:

How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop? 

[Jon]

Jumping in here real quick to let you know that one of our Firefox Product Managers is currently hosting a discussion thread here on Connect about how we can best support web apps—and of course you're all invited to join and share your feedback:

How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop? 

[JHeuser]

I would also like to voice my concerns about AI. I believe that it should be completely transparent - we should be able to know exactly what the AI is trained on, and when it's being used. I appreciate that you're keeping it local and using it for accessibility, but I hope you understand my concern about the ethics of this technology.

[VonGoofy]

You will have an option to use public AI's, or something you run locally via some software like Ollama for example. Which is quite awesome imho, because no other browser offers that. They all have some version of their chatGPT assistants and no other option.

[wutongtaiwan]

I hope that when you add the A function, don't forget to use it for Chinese

[wutongtaiwan]

The AI I want is an AI that runs locally, and when I use AI, I ask the AI some questions and the AI does a search, and then the content of the search results is summarized through human language, and that's what I want.

[cidra]

I hope you mainline ideas from the best extensions out there regarding tab management:

- Sidebery/Tree Style tabs for vertical tabs

- Simple Tab Groups for tab grouping

- Tab Manager V2 for a "Mozilla Connect"-like page (Whose tabs can be moved by drag n dropping across panes)

Having a unified and coherent system would be fantastic

[jomatom]

I'd also love a split view as in Edge or Arc Browser.

[Moltke]

Good work! However, I don't see any mention to support for minimize/close to tray in Linux. Why windows and not Linux? Why? Is it really that difficult? I'm no programmer so.

[Jon]

Are you referring to Thunderbird? If so, there's a specific thread here on Connect for that: System tray support on Linux - and good news, it's currently in development.

[jomatom]

What I also really love about Arc Browser is that you can rename tab titles!

[rouxken]

I also like this option. I would like to be able to create a rule to dynamically rename Title on some domains.

To give you an example, I am PM and I often create User Stories in Azure DevOps. When I open, the US, the title of the tabs always starts with "User Story" and then the ID and the US name. I would like to get rid of "User Story" in the title that doesn't bring much value to me. 

[Jon]

Thanks! This has been requested on Connect. For those interested, here is a link to that thread: Ability to rename tabs 

[moz_samri]

yes agreed, that ability, like in prior extentions would allow more flexibility.
adding user-metadata-name-for, to a bookmark, and then using that info to display the web page, is what is missing...  again, enriching the metadata captured by bookmarks seems to be the answer.

[okay_okay]

This is great news can't wait for tab groups! 👍