Try out Link Previews in Firefox Labs 138 and share your feedback with us!

[itskaren]

Hi all!

I'm Karen, the product manager in charge of Firefox Labs. Today, Joy (@mozpm) from the Firefox product team is joining me to share some awesome news!

We’ve just introduced a new experimental feature in Firefox Labs on Beta and Nightly called Link Previews, and we’d love for you to give it a try and let us know what you think.

What it does

We created Link Previews to help you browse more efficiently by showing a quick snapshot of what’s behind a link before you open it. It’s designed to help you get to the most relevant info faster, reduce tab clutter, and stay focused and organized as you browse the web.  

Most links you preview will include an image, the webpage title, and AI-generated key points. 

Firefox uses AI that runs locally on your device to read the linked page and create the key points. Because the AI runs locally, it works in a way that prioritizes your privacy since your browsing data is not shared or stored. 

And, as with all of our AI-enabled features, Link Previews is entirely optional: it only appears in Firefox if you enable the feature and consent to local AI processing. 

How to try it

This feature is currently available through Firefox Labs 138 in limited regions:

1. In Firefox, type about:settings#experimental into the address bar
   
   
2. Check the box next to Link Previews to turn it on
   
   
3. Hover over a link and press Shift + Alt/Option to see a preview
   
   

What to expect

This is an early version: it’s functional, but you may run into some rough edges. Your feedback will help us shape this feature as we continue to improve it! 

Known limitations 

• Keyboard shortcuts: The current shortcut (Hover + Shift + Alt/Option) may overlap with system shortcuts on some devices. We’re working on ways to make this more accessible. 
  
  
• Language support: Right now, Link Previews work best on English-language pages. The feature also may not be available in all regions while testing in Firefox Labs.
  
  
• Accuracy of Key points: In some cases, the AI that generates the key points may miss context from the webpage and make mistakes.  Your feedback on these mistakes helps us improve the feature.

We’d love your feedback

Once you’ve had a chance to try it, please share your thoughts in the comments below. Whether it’s UX polish, content quality, or ideas for how this feature could better support your workflow – we’re all ears. 

Thanks for helping us build a better Firefox! 

 ------

**UPDATE on April 29**

We’ve just incorporated a bug fix to optimize the Link Previews experience. This is a rare occurrence when you may need to “restart” this now fixed feature in Labs--if you’ve been using Link Previews in Firefox Labs on Nightly, Beta, or Developer Edition, please visit Labs (about:preferences#experimental in the URL bar) and re-check the “Link previews” checkbox to get the feature back.

Sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for your support!

[Erwan]

My personal point of view:

Not interested at all, I turned off all previews, including tab previews, it annoys me all these things that open all the time. If I click on a link, I know where I'm going, no need for previews.

And where does AI come from?? I thought there was no AI in Firefox, only an isolated chat that could be disabled?? You mean to tell us that in fact the AI ​​is mixed into the Firefox core and that it has access to all our activity??

---FR---

Mon point vu personnel :

Pas du tout intéressé, j'ai désactivé tous les aperçus, y compris ceux des onglets, ça m'énerve toutes ces choses qui s'ouvrent tout le temps. Si je clique sur un lien, je sais où je vais, pas besoin d'aperçus.

Et l'IA, elle vient d'où ?? je croyais qu'il n'y avait pas d'IA dans Firefox seulement un tchat isolé qu'on pouvait désactiver ?? Vous voulez nous dire qu'en fait l'IA est mélangé dans le noyau Firefox et qu'elle a accès à toute notre activité ??

[mozpm]

Hi @Erwan, that’s a completely fair perspective – appreciate you raising the question. It’s clear you know what kind of browsing experience you want, and so the option to turn the Link Previews feature on or off is there for that reason.

Regarding the AI piece, just to clarify: the Link Previews AI model only downloads to your Firefox when you choose to turn on the feature.  

The model runs locally and on-device – so you can rest assured your browsing data stays with you. It’s not part of Firefox’s core code, it doesn’t have access to anything else you do in Firefox, and it’s only used to generate key points when you request them. 

Our goal is to give people choice: some people will want a fast, minimal browser with no extras, while others want smarter tools to help them get things done. We hope Firefox can support both – thanks again for raising these points!

[whoami730]

Is it possible to integrate all ML related settings in one place? We have atleast two firefox features using ML now - smart tab groups & link previews. Also more information/settings on which model is being used, from where etc will be much more useful. This information is not available anywhere except technical documents .

[CallCateIn58]

Since Link Previews has the option to be turned on or off, can Link Previews AI be turned on or off?

I love Link Previews without AI.

[D0m1n1c]

I think the biggest concern of the users with AI is privacy and the fact that it could see all we do in the browser. If all AI features in Firefox work locally and can be disabled with a simple switch, you should be even more explicit on this in your communication and put this in first place in your website and your other communications : "We offer private AI that work offline and can't share your browsing with AI models and companies.".

[mozpm]

Thanks for the suggestion! Appreciate this feedback on surfacing even more explicit communications on Mozilla's stance, @D0m1n1c. We are indeed intending to develop any new browser AI capabilities with these principles of user choice and privacy in mind.

As in the case of Link Previews, Firefox users would optionally be able to use AI-enhanced features and its underlying AI, with options to turn it on and off.

We want to make that much clear -- hope this helps to address concerns and questions around AI integration in the browser! 

[Erwan]

Thank you for this answer.
 
I hope this feature will be disabled by default and that Mozilla will not force me to install an AI (however local) in my Firefox against my will in the next update.

[Anonymous]

Every time a new default shortcut is added to Firefox, support communities get flooded with posts from people saying that these new shortcuts conflict with something else they had been using for ages, and that they want to know how to change or disable them in Firefox.

Some of those people react in a very violent way when we try to explain that Firefox offers no way to customize keyboard shortcuts.

Please work on this before adding even more shortcuts:

* https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/customizable-hotkeys/idi-p/4979
* https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/hotkeys-yes-please/td-p/57804

[kxra]

It's nice, but I'm assuming that the hotkeys are mostly to prevent it from being too obnoxious during testing, but will probably be enabled without hotkeys if it works out. For me, the previews are for some using a much larger text size than anything else on the page (would expect smaller, since it's a tiny preview) so they appear very cramped.

Also, one of my pet peeves is when stuff slowly loads and then the view for the content grows as it loads. For example infinite-loading web pages that have a navigation footer you can never reach, or searching for a user in Instagram messenger and tapping on the result only to have the results finish loading and then you tap on the horrible AI assistant that just took the actual results spot in the list.

[okay_okay]

I like the idea, but the hover plus keyboard shortcut experience is a bit clunky. I'd prefer to just enable the feature and then hover over links to see preview (without having to also enter a shortcut). Thanks! 

[00FF00]

Looking forward to this being added to the regular release version, I had to fire up the dev version and poke around just to see it in action - very nice!

Now if only we could remove that pesky empty flexible space from the toolbar as long as we have either the title bar or menu bar enabled 😁

[Denir]

Looks good and useful feature. I would also like to suggest a similar feature edge has, when you hover over an image and press ctrl, it opens a small window where you can zoom into the image, would love to see this on Firefox. Also off topic but please please implement split tabs functionality, it's really important to a lot of us.

[2mustange]

Its kind of clunky if i were to add my 2 cents. 

Seems to take forever for it to generate the "preview". I would almost prefer the ability to do something of an inline modal of the webpage and have the ability to preview the whole webpage and just exit out of it without loading a new tab.

[Anonymous]

If the link points to a URL pattern that is known to be used by articles (e.g. Wikipedia, news websites, blog hosting services, etc.), this modal could actually show its Reader View and load it almost instantly, allowing the user to skim over it with his/her own eyes and brain.

[Windows_Vista]

What a useless feature its just AI bulls*** why couldn't you guys ever come up with something original or even remotely useful!

[jollysea]

I'm very sorry, but I don't get the hype about so-called "AI"* at all. I feel like I have to switch search engines every two weeks because the one I use chooses to "summarize" the websites instead of using the meta-tags or the first few lines of text to give me a preview. And now my browser wants to do the same?

AI summaries are never good, and often wrong and/or biased.

One example: I've searched for a female singer, and one of the results I've seen was an "AI" summaries of her wikipedia page (in Duckduckgo search results!) highlighting a relationship she had. One that lasted 2 weeks. If somebody gave you (in school, in uni, at work) the task to summarize a biography of a singer in 200 characters and you choose to highlight a relationship of 2 weeks, you'd fail that test.
It's also clearly biased because somehow male singers have their careers summarized, while somehow with female artists it's their interpersonal relationships that the "AI" "thinks"** is important.

More often than not, "AI" products are next to useless when you're not only interested in English. This might come as a shock to USians, but not everybody in the world speaks just English. Some people actually enjoy learning languages and reading websites in these languages. What they, however, mostly don't enjoy is reading "AI"-generated summaries that sound unnatural and often childish.

I'd love Mozilla to build a good, privacy protecting browser that's also fast. And not only fast on new computers, but also fast old machines. I don't want an "AI" running in the background, browsing the web for me, I want to do it for myself. In the time the "AI" is calculating a bullsh*t "key points", I can look at the website for myself. I'm also sure this will consume less energy and be better for the planet. Speaking of that, I think Mozilla should ditch the AI-team and focus all that energy and money and ingenious, creative people into creating a faster, more energy-efficient browser.

(*most often not very intelligent, more often than not a lot of humans involved in the process, so neither articifcial nor intelligent
**machines don't think)

[tnjh]

I made an account specifically to reply to this topic so let me be clear, and I really cannot stress this enough: I do not want want this or any other AI in my browser. There's so many other things I'd like instead, like text-wrap: pretty or the ability to more easily switch profiles.

[Boudah]

TL;DR: not interested by AI features.

You stress out that the choice is ours, but it's not entirely true, the time given to that isn't given to other things.

you say data is local, but where and from whom the LLM is born? How you plan the LLM to stay up to date?

You talk about smart tools, isn't us humans who has the chance to get some intelligence via sharing, not consuming, informations?

Who take this trajectory for Mozilla? How much money was involved?


The only fact that devs are working on it instead of the education, security

[cordelya]

Not interested.

"Features" like this are what prompted me to switch to a fork. I'm always looking for the least-worst browser and right now Firefox isn't it.

[taichara]

I could not be less interested in "AI" nonsense bloating up my apps (and burning down the world), especially when the development of such useless nonsense is eating up time, effort and resources that could be going towards actually improving Firefox.

This continual addition of "AI" features brings me closer and closer to moving to a fork without it, and convincing as many as I can to leave Firefox with me.

[lackey]

Hello Mozilla team: 

Are you actually asking us, or are you just looking for a critical mass of people to agree with your predetermined conclusion? People already said what they thought of AI and you collectively ignored it.

What's the monetary plan here? Millions of dollars have been diverted into AI projects, and AI is not a profitable industry. Why is Mozilla engaging in this?

[aria1]

This AI is built by Meta and Hugging Face, Firefox's R&D expense is very limited when implementing it. It's technology that exists and provides value, why are you angry they're giving you an easy value-add?

[RexDart]

It's not about financial or dev costs to Mozilla. It's about un-asked-for features with dubious value. Generative models hallucinate, and random new features add bloat and security attack surface area. I'd rather have faster, slimmer, more secure software than software with fad features shoehorned in.

Not to mention the ethical issues with LLMs and diffusion models. I'd much, MUCH rather reinforce ownership rights of individuals than normalize the proliferation of centralized tech.

[PaulFirefoxUX]

Totally hear where you're coming from. We’re very aware of the concerns around bloat, security, and ethics – and we’re trying to do things differently.

The AI in link previews is totally optional and designed with user control and privacy in mind. The model runs locally on your device – not centralized in the cloud – and won’t be added to anyone's browser unless they explicitly choose to add it and give consent. And from release 140 you'll be able to remove any local AI that's been added by this or other features.

As for value, every idea goes through UX research and testing with Firefox users before it’s considered as a feature – or often comes from the research in the first place. We know not everyone wants AI in their browser, but we have also spoken with users who find the option of adding this kind of feature to be helpful, especially when it’s designed to respect their agency and privacy.

Appreciate the pushback – it’s part of what keeps us honest, and why we try to prioritize user choice.

[RexDart]

This is an amazing response, thank you! I'm glad you're respecting users' privacy and choices, and not foisting controversial features on people as default. Thanks for clarifying and respecting us 🙂

[RexDart]

Created an account here to pile on. Please stop cramming AI into everything. It only obfuscates the actual content we're looking for.

[henning]

Please no "AI" features. AI-restraint could become Firefox' unique selling proposition, as AI "features" are now crammed into every microwave. Just don't.

[strb]

It's because of 'features' like this I nowadays usually go directly to Wikipedia to find stuff instead of using Google or other search engines. Please don't make the internet even worse by putting it into the browser.

Oh, and shove that AI crap where the sun doesn't shine.

[HikesinRain]

No AI at all.  After all, this is a browser. No need for a lot of invasive stuff like this.  But it's looking like you're going with it, no matter what your customers say.  Anyone else think Mozilla isn't listening?

[thumper1019]

I'd prefer this gave a preview of the webpage instead. The Arc browser does something similar, and it's very helpful if you just want to glance at something without opening a new tab and navigating to it.

I'm not a fan of the AI usage here. It is not accurate and requires additional compute power. Please add an option to disable the AI overview.

[PaulFirefoxUX]

Thanks for the feedback, Thumper1019. That's in the plan 🙂

[itskaren]

Hi everyone!

A quick update: we’ve just incorporated a bug fix to optimize the Link Previews experience. This is a rare occurrence when you may need to “restart” this now fixed feature in Labs--if you’ve been using Link Previews in Firefox Labs on Nightly, Beta, or Developer Edition, please visit Labs (about:preferences#experimental in the URL bar) and re-check the “Link previews” checkbox to get the feature back.

Sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for your support!

[shakeel]

Just tried out Link Previews in Firefox Labs 138—really impressive! It’s a great time-saver to see a snapshot of a link before clicking. The design feels clean and non-intrusive. Looking forward to more customization options in future versions. Keep up the great work!

[Maupertuis]

is there any information about what underlying model is being used and other such technical details?

[PaulFirefoxUX]

In this blog post: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/ai/ai-tech/ai-link-previews-firefox/

[lackey]

It currently says

"This is currently powered by wllama (WebAssembly llama.cpp) with SmolLM2-360M from HuggingFace"

[JPRuehmann]

Hovering would be the Best I think.

[TriceratopsGang]

Would be cool if I can turn off the AI generated key points.

[PaulFirefoxUX]

Thanks TriceratopsGang! The plan is that if you don't consent to the AI model being added to your Firefox (or if you do consent to add it, but then you remove it later) you will see just the top part of the preview without the key points. And if you do have the AI model added, then you can also collapse the key points section so that it doesn't generate again until you open it again.