>I would think most non technical users would just use a different browser.
I would think they would list one or two of them under the “alternatives” section…?
LibreWolf in general is a browser you need to enable things if you want them rather than have to disable spyware like for mainline firefox
Who asked for this? Who wants it? Certainly not the Linux / open-source crowd, and they're just about the only ones who are keeping Firefox alive.
If there's anybody from Mozilla or the Firefox dev team in this thread, I'd be interested to hear the thinking behind this addition.
Telemetry should always be opt in not opt out - I don't care how you justify it but especially I don't care when you've marketed yourself with "Firefox is built with privacy and protection as the default."[1]
[1] https://www.firefox.com/en-US/user-privacy/
When it comes to on by default - If what you are doing amounts to "I Am Altering the Deal, Pray I Don't Alter It Any Further." then you might have to ask yourself whether you should be doing it.
Most prominent thing is chat in sidebar. It's iframe + a few shortcuts. Optional, harmless, using zero resources. Actually quite convenient.
Another is perplexity being one of the search providers. This is literally config not code. I wonder how many people actually removed or even looked at the list of the default search providers before that.
I think only real one is ml naming for tabs. Just meh.
Honestly people who deny any usefulness of AI are getting dangerously close to flat-earthers by now.
But you could bring up the same argument about vertical tabs, tab groups, Firefox Sync or many other things that interfere with the browser on much deeper level than shortcut to open page in the sidebar.
Is there argument to single out this specific feature apart from "AI bad"?
I'd like to see (opt-in) automatic grouping. The kinda-sorta grouping it does still requires you to manually engage with it.
What made you jump to that conclusion? My guess about someone who's using a non-mainstream browser and figuring out how to configure it to their liking is that they're likely also using AI in more ways than the standard Chat-Webinterface, eg Agents, CLI tools, MCP,... To give an analogy, rolling your eyes over brainrot memes isn't denying the usefulness of smartphones or messengers either. The underlying sentiment is being critical of things that get pushed down our throats through A/B-optimized patterns that ultimately serve other interests than your own, profits or darker.
Please don't compare it to Google or Microsoft products that give you "Enable now/Remind later" or just no option at all.
This is a remarkably useless argument; "any" could be anything whatsoever, for example that the fuzzy logic of some prior AI craze ended up in certain rice cookers, while ignoring that the remaining 99.8881118881118883479075520881451666355133056640625 (or so) percent of AI is some combination of grift, wishful thinking, or both.
How do you propose they finance development if we consider simple integrations with zero privacy or customization impact "selling out"?
That being said, I'm a FF user interested in exploring what LLM features in webbrowsers could bring. I would hate it if lack of them would make me switch to chromium-based browsers. So I'm happy Mozilla is exploring these.
At least the local AI features, being able to translate or summarize a page without sending it off to Google, seem like they'd appeal to this crowd the most.
I don't really understand the article's complaints (like "high cpu & ram usage with firefox local ai features" and "forcing [...] without asking the user") when to my understanding they're something you have to intentionally decide to use and are not using any resources otherwise - unless there's some feature I've missed.
Yes I would like more local translation support! (Faster, better, more languages, sometimes it fails on mobile for unknown reasons). Also Firefox history could use refresh (like suggested here https://community.brave.app/t/improvements-for-browser-histo... and 5 can be AI enhanced)
I have no problem with it announcing new features and asking if I wish to enable them after an update, but I'd really rather prefer it not to force enable new features (regardless of proximity/relevance to AI) whether it tells me about them up front - and especially don't want it to if they aren't even notifying me of it.
Appealing to that crowd is not big enough to grow it's market share from 2%.
Do you really think AI features are going to move the needle here? Is your grandma going to think "Wow, Firefox can summarize my emails!" and switch web browsers?
I'm not thrilled it isn't open source. But it works, it has the best out of the box experience I've seen in any browser, and they don't shove AI features in my face.
The same goes for right clicking on the page → ask AI → remove.
But boy does it not add extra effort removing these features every time there’s a new roll-out and it’s not done the best way IMO. I feel as if these features would go down better if Mozilla actually notified the user that they’re available and then offered whether to enable them or not (could have them enabled by default for new users). That way you’re still giving a choice, but in a more respectful manner.
If anyone is interested I’ve gutted all the more obscene stuff out of Waterfox and have instead left the useful ones such a ML translation, which is opt-in.
Related: I feel like onboarding is a lost art, more software should bring back software wizards and UI tours. Feels like you somehow have to intuitively know how something works (unlikely) or do a web search on how to use everything instead of having it shown to you nicely.
Sort of related, after reading this I went and checked the Waterfox reddit and saw some people complaining about recent changes. I agree with a person there that one of the most important things is not changing. One of the reasons I use Waterfox is to not be subject to the caprices of Mozilla. I just want the same interface I've been using since back in the days of like Firefox 4.0. If there are changes, they can be introduced in an opt-in, reversible way as you suggest. But the default assumption should be "don't break users' workflows by changing behavior".
I appreciate all you do with Waterfox! I've been using it for years now.
Yes, please! We use Google's online office programs at work and every time it has so far popped up a notification about a new feature I immediately dismissed it by the act of actually doing the work I opened the tab to do. Then I have no idea how to find out what that feature was again, as the popup notification was dismissed.
Is there an active user market for browsers? If there isn't then this analysis is useless.
What? I have yet to meet a single person who has any interest in "AI powered browsers"
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/reconciling-mozillas-missi...
I disable a ton in default FF and even run the unbranded versions so that it's not trialware (FF branded builds all expire when their baked in add-ons CA TLS certs expire). But the LLM translation? That's finally a good feature.
It isn't clear what browser.ml.chat and browser.ml.pageAssist are associated with in terms of features. Does anyone know? I tried disabling all shown in the write-up and local LLM translation still seems to work so I assume it's something else.
I don't feel opposed to them changing the browser in principle--certainly there have been many improvements to web browsers over the years. Is privacy the concern here?
Searching for "AI" shows one other setting: "Quickly access bookmarks, tabs from your phone, AI chatbots, and more without leaving your main view." But I'd already disabled that apparently. Despite that, there are plenty of flags that were enabled mentioned in the article.
Any setting where there's a difference between "disabled" and "fully disabled" is user hostile. And, for a company that advertises itself as all about respecting the user, Mozilla sure does love their user-hostile decisions.
Mozilla has made changes that happened by default before. Often I have had to find the setting to put it back to how I wanted. I remember when it moved the URL bar to the bottom.
I don't think it is always an easy call to make. Tabs were a significant user experience improvement, but hiding it behind an opt-in would have limited it to people who knew about it.
I use Firefox as main on desktop and mobile. I have noticed messages on upgrade pointing to LLM features. I haven't engaged with them an from thereon haven't noticed any change because of them.
Saying there are reports of excessive memory or CPU use isn't terribly useful without references to those reports. One such report posted on HN was shown to have been unrelated to the LLM.
Are there any reports actually showing degradation because of LLMs rather than post hoc ergo propter hoc?
LLMs are garbage and they add nothing to the browsing experience.
> Are there any reports actually showing degradation because of LLMs rather than post hoc ergo propter hoc?
You can control this option with a setting. It seems like it would be really really easy to just test this. As a result I can't see any reason to doubt this by default or apply a legalistic evidentiary standard when considering it.
I'm not a fan of shoving "AI" everywhere, but I wouldn't go that far. The local page translation is useful and more private than sending everything to Google.
AFIK no
nearly all AI features only do any compute if you explicitly ask them to do stuff
the only exception is that when you create a tab group (and only then!) it will auto recommend a name. And while I don't find a very useful for me (and I use tab groups a ton) I also have observed that non technical users get confused with unnamed tab groups and the UI around them so I really understand why they do that. Also while it's "technically" a LLM it's tiny and fast to run and could also have been implemented with just embeddings at a slightly loss of quality (and again only runs if you create a tab group and not at any other time and not if you computer has less then 3GiB of RAM etc. etc.(yes FF disables AI features on very low RAM devices AFIK))
Put people hear AI think LLM get angry and stop thinking.
Or considering that maybe a non negligible amount of people outside of their bubble want exactly that and might leave your browser if you don't supply that.
I also think that we in the long run will probably let machines do most tedious browsing for us-- digesting ad-ridden websites, digesting interfaces. The LLM navigates the actual web, presented to maximize revenue and maximize user engagement, time spent on the website etc., but we only see actual content, carefully arranged to be as comprehensible as possible, and if we want to communicate with somebody through a website controlled by others we formulate the message and the LLM submits it.
I'm so confused, they have a whole page that starts with how they run everything on device[0]. But the page ends telling you how great it is that you can choose your AI service which then leads to a page where ... all the options are hosted AI providers and half the page is about you have to read their terms of service and they all invade your privacy[1]. I stupidly enabled Gemini at some point and now there's no obvious way in the UI to disable it. I can only switch to a different hosted service provider.
I searched in settings for AI, model, LLM, nada.
Whatever good things they did here they totally screwed up the comms and UI execution of it.
[0] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/firefox-ai/ai-browser-fe...
I would think most users would ignore the features they don't like? Idgi
Three dots -> Settings -> Page Summaries to disable that.
NOTE: Some settings might block too much, edit and use as you please.
https://rentry.co/browserconfigs / https://rentry.org/browserconfigs
When I go to about:config and enter "browser.lm", there's nothing displayed. That's on the latest 144.0.2 release.
Is any of it somehow related to this? https://www.heise.de/en/news/One-API-for-all-Mozilla-ends-LL...
Example: Put this expression(using lockPref to hardcode the config values) in environment.systemPackages(assuming "with pkgs"):
(wrapFirefox firefox-unwrapped {
extraPrefs =
(
''
lockPref("browser.ml.enable", false);
lockPref("browser.ml.chat.enabled", false);
lockPref("browser.ml.chat.hideFromLabs", true);
lockPref("browser.ml.chat.hideLabsShortcuts", true);
lockPref("browser.ml.chat.page", false);
lockPref("browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge", false);
lockPref("browser.ml.chat.page.menuBadge", false);
lockPref("browser.ml.chat.menu", false);
lockPref("browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled", false);
lockPref("browser.ml.pageAssist.enabled", false);
lockPref("browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled", false);
lockPref("browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnable", false);
lockPref("extensions.ml.enabled", false);
''
);
})It's of course totally fine to be annoyed if Firefox doesn't have a supported preference to disable them (though from the discussion below it sounds like they do) or if you set that preference and then they change it.
What is the supported way?
> you shouldn't complain that Mozilla changed the prefs and reenabled these features.
Then they should provide a reliable way of getting what I want. This notion that software developers know better than me is poisonous.
The settings UI.
> > you shouldn't complain that Mozilla changed the prefs and reenabled these features.
> Then they should provide a reliable way of getting what I want.
As I said in the comment you are responding to, it's perfectly legitimate to complain if Mozilla didn't provide a setting to disable these features (though it seems they have done so in at least some cases). However, if they don't do so, and you decide to disable them in some unsupported way, you shouldn't be surprised that you get unexpected results.
> This notion that software developers know better than me is poisonous.
I don't think this is really a reasonable proposition as a general matter. A browser is a very complicated piece of software and each individual configuration point is additional development and testing burden, both separately, and in combination with other configuration points. Developers need to make all kinds of decisions in order to manage engineering complexity. In some cases, where developers know that people will want to configure things, they'll provide configuration options but it's not practical to do so for every feature, and inevitably in some cases they'll get it wrong (see "legitimate to complain" above).
You just don't understand the eleven-dimensional chess that you have to play to get from 30% marketshare to 2% marketshare. They have to think they have a winning strategy, judging by the way they talk to everybody who criticizes their decisions.
I think this is why they keep shoving new features at users whether they want them or not, making them incredibly difficult to disable, rather than presenting an option try something new, or even making opting out of features easy and intuitive.
The latter two would lead to fewer users of the feature, which means it risks being removed for not being used by most users. Not to mention having an easy opt-out functionality means its usage can be tracked, which could generate unwanted statistics and make a stakeholder lose face.
In the comment section here I see lot of people complaining about the fact it's enabled by default as well as some concerns about resource usage. Could someone experienced in desktop app architecture explain if disabling them functionalities makes Firefox that much faster or using less resouces? I'd assume that those functionalities are kind of loaded on demand?
"AI" became such a keyword that seem to instantly give either positive or negative response, it's also an advertised feature of every second app with many of them just forcing AI into you just because of hype. This doesn't seem to be a case in Firefox - so I highly disagree with the title - the features are there but they don't go into your way if you don't want them, therefore it's easy to just use it, only when needed
but not on my machine
but I don't understand why people make such a deal about it
it looks a loot like "I don't like this so it mustn't even exist even if some people like it" mentality
like
- all of this features are opt in, they don't just randomly send your data somewhere or randomly eat your CPI resources (without you having enabled them)
- the smart tab group features(1) are the only very visible and kind dump/useless one, and you can disable them without tweaking internal configs unser "Addons > On-device AI" (but it won't disable the button in the group tabs menu which is used to enable that feature in the first place)
- for many users side translations is an important must have feature, it's one of the AI features, and having a local on-device no data send to servers translation is very desirable (to be fair US users probably don't care nor realize it matters, but it really matters) (To be fair the OP didn't disable this either)
- for increasingly many users integration with chat bots (e.g. ChatGPT) is a must have browser feature(2). The integration is also only visible in a context menu(3) and hidden in the a selector for the side bar and needs to be explicitly setup before it does anything. So a feature some people want and treat as must have and now can have and for everyone else it's pretty much out of the way and not pushed onto you at all. So why insists that it's not okay to have it even in a selector hardly any power users will ever use (because the other options there are bookmarks, and history, both with well known widely used keyboard shortcuts)
- the preview was a "Labs" (i.e. experimental preview) feature you have to explicitly enable and then use the right hot key to use, and it's one of this "some people expect this feature in 2025" features (but not sure what happened to it, it's neither in Labs nor enabled in any FF browser I have, so maybe they discontinued it)
(1): They IMHO are pretty dump and seem more like a way to setup the whole infrastructure around them with a trivial to implement feature then a in depth feature mozilla cares about. I guess.
(2): On HN it often seems like only enthusiasts and not many non-tech people use ChatGPT and co. _That is not true at all_. When it comes to "simple" ChatGPT usage far more non technical users use it then technical one. Like for dump stuff like shopping list, holiday check lists, etc. The problem OpenAI has isn't that they don't have a lot of users, it's that they need a absurd amount of high paying users. But the tasks most non-tech people use generic ChatGPT for aren't worth a lot. Like even the Plus plan is a "only if you are wealthy enough to burn 20 bucks every month without caring" option in such a context and the Pro plan just absurd.
(3): Is anyone except non technical users still using browsers context menus in a way where a "Ask AI Chat-Bot" entry matters???? Like copy, past, undo, redo, select all have trivial short cuts. Language/spell check is rarely touched and inspect has a short cut where you press Q after right clicking.
empiko•2h ago
johnh-hn•2h ago
You can search for the configuration options mentioned in the article (e.g. browser.ml.enable) in there.
smir•2h ago
Retr0id•2h ago