Mozilla has just released a major update for Firefox on desktop platforms. Version 136 is now available on Windows, macOS, and Linux, offering users many new features, such as long-anticipated vertical tabs, an updated sidebar, new tab page improvements, and more.
Here is the changelog:
You can now enable the updated Firefox sidebar in Settings > General > Browser Layout to quickly access multiple tools in one click, without leaving your main view. Sidebar tools include an AI chatbot of your choice, bookmarks, history, and tabs from devices you sync with your Mozilla account.
Keep a lot of tabs open? Try our new vertical tabs layout to quickly scan your list of tabs. With vertical tabs, your open and pinned tabs appear in the sidebar instead of along the top of the browser. To turn on vertical tabs, right-click on the toolbar near the top of the browser and select Turn on Vertical Tabs. If you’ve enabled the updated sidebar, you can also go to Customize sidebar and check Vertical tabs. Early testers report feeling more organized after using vertical tabs for a few days.
The Clear browsing data and cookies dialog now allows clearing saved form info separately from browsing history.
Smartblock Embeds allows users to selectively unblock certain social media embeds that are blocked in ETP Strict and Private Browsing modes. Currently, support is limited to a few embed types, with more to be added in future updates.
Firefox now upgrades page loads to HTTPS by default and gracefully falls back to HTTP if the secure connection fails. This behavior is known as HTTPS-First.
On macOS, some background tabs will be moved to lower power cores, reducing energy usage.
Hardware-accelerated playback of HEVC video content is now supported on macOS.
Hardware video decoding is now enabled for AMD GPUs on Linux.
On Linux, Firefox is now available on ARM64 (AArch64), with installation options via APT and tarballs. Flatpak support is coming soon.
The Weather forecast on the New Tab page is expanding to additional regions, including Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, as part of an ongoing regional rollout.
Address autofill enabled for users in the United Kingdom.
Fixes and other changes include the following:
Firefox will now prefer the PNG format when copying images out of Firefox, allowing the preservation of transparency.
Various security fixes.
For New Tab stories, the Save to Pocket action was moved from a button to the context menu along with other actions, such as Bookmark.
The macOS DMG installer packages now use LZMA for compression, reducing download size and installation time.
Due to recent changes in macOS Sequoia, the shortcut for completing search strings to .com addresses has been changed from Ctrl+Enter to Cmd+Enter.
You can find the rest of the changelog in the official release notes, including Developer Information, Enterprise Release Notes, Web Platform changes, and more. Existing users can update Firefox by heading to Menu > Help > About Firefox, while everyone else can get the browser from the official website or the Microsoft Store (for Windows 10 and 11 users).
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