Starting with Firefox 148, which rolls out on Feb. 24, you’ll find a new AI controls section within the desktop browser settings. It provides a single place to block current and future generative AI features in Firefox.
They actually listened to the community, thats very nice.
people (not calling you out specifically) keep suggesting Librewolf like it isn’t driving around a city in a tank. it gets the job done, sure, but most people will not tolerate its faults. Suggest something more in-between like Waterfox at least.
Suggesting Librewolf is like asking people to browse the web via Tor. it works, sure, but the inconvenience will make most people give up on gecko-based browsers and give into Google/chrome via Brave or the million other chrome-in-sheep’s-wool browsers.
Let’s recommend viable alternatives: https://www.waterfox.com/
What kind of inconviniences? I have experienced literally none - except you may need to enable DRM. That’s one then
DRM is one. On Windows it doesn’t auto-update by default (maybe that’s changed now?). I recall you have to whitelist some sites to work properly. It’s just not something I can set up for my parents and expect most/all websites to work without intervention.
No, it is very different from suggesting TBB or even just TB.
A few websites may have some rough edges. Some of that will come from uBlock Origin. Some will come from LW defaults like letterboxing/anti-fingerprinting.
And some websites will have issues with vanilla FF, because it’s not Chrome.
Yes, for some sites you may need to turn off a privacy setting. I have run across 2-3 such, usually an over-engineered Django or custom-coded WordPress site. 98%+ of the time, I don’t notice.
I’ve been using it for a while, and it feels almost indistinguishable from regular Firefox. Broken sites are not a common problem.
What faults?
Let’s pull some obvious ones from the feature list!
For some other ones:
I’m not saying I don’t like these features. I do. I only accept login cookies from services I host myself.
Most people will see that as an extreme annoyance the first time it happens, close the browser, uninstall it, and never try another Firefox fork again.
Most people care enough about privacy to want convenient ways to increase it. Most people do not care enough about privacy to have to log into Facebook every single time they restart their browser.
All of these are disableable, very few people will even bother looking into how to disable them. They will stop using the browser.
Most website-breaking features can be re-enabled in the Settings menu, in a special Librewolf section
I need FOSS people to understand that most people will not do that.
Also I did say that
You listed a lot of very interesting features and probably convinced me to install it and give it a try, thanks, but again, what faults?
These are faults for most people. They’re benefits to some! Myself included! I use an even more strict browser for most websites. I am not most people, neither are you. Most of the people I know, and most of the people I interact with, would uninstall that within 5 days because it’s missing features that have been standard in web browsers for at least a decade.
If these features interest you, that’s great! But you’re not the average user. Congrats tho. Librewolf may be perfect for you.
is that one still owned by an advertising company?
The original creator owns it again. That’s why I use it. If he sells it or whatever then I’ll switch to librewolf. I just don’t want ai bs in my browser but I am not a privacy nerd either.
I’d say Mullvad’s browser is more like browsing the net via TOR, but Librewolf is only about 2 steps behind it.
But yeah there are so many others that will still feel usable to someone who doesn’t think the everyone isn’t part of their threat model