Firefox 92.0 release: here is what is new and changed

Firefox 92.0 Stable's release date is September 7, 2021. The new Stable version of the Firefox web browser is a stability and security release for the most part, but it does include new features as well.

Last month, Mozilla released Firefox 91.0, a new base for the Extended Support Release channel of the Firefox web browser.

Firefox 92.0 is not the only version of Firefox that is released this week. Firefox 91.0 ESR is upgraded to Firefox 91.1 ESR, and Firefox 78.13 ESR to Firefox 78.14 ESR.

Firefox's Beta, Developer and Nightly channels are all moved to a new version, in this case to Firefox 93 Beta, Firefox 93 Developer and Firefox 94 Nightly. The Android version will be updated as well soon.

Check out the Firefox 91 release overview in case you missed it or want to look it up again.

Executive Summary

Mozilla fixed the screen reader and accessibility tools issue that could degrade Firefox performance significantly.
Firefox supports the AVIF image format by default.
WebRender should be enabled on all systems now.
Firefox 92.0 includes security updates.

Firefox 92.0 download and update

firefox 92.0

Most Firefox installations are updated automatically. Mozilla introduced support for background updates on Windows, which further streamlines installations of new versions.

The new version will be released later on September 7, 2021.

To check the installed version, go to Menu > Help > About Firefox. Note that this will also run a manual check for updates and will install new versions that are found during the scan.

Manual downloads are also available. The following pages list direct downloads for supported Firefox channels.

New features and improvements

Support for AVIF images enabled by default

Mozilla Firefox supports the AVIF image format by default now. It is a new image format developed by the Alliance for Open Media that is royalty-free, and based on the AV1 video codec, which is also royalty-free.

Firefox supports non-animated AVIF images in this initial release.

Firefox can display still images, with colorspace support for both full and limited range colors, and image transforms for mirroring and rotation.

Firefox users and organizations may use the preference image.avif.compliance_strictness to adjust the compliance strictness with the specification.

Note: The flag in Firefox that determines whether AVIF is enabled or not, image.avif.enabled , was set to FALSE on the test system. Load about:config and check the preference image.avif.enabled to see if it is enabled (TRUE) or not (FALSE).

Automatic updates to HTTPS

Mozilla's work on improving HTTP and HTTPS handling continues. After introducing a HTTPS-First policy for Firefox's private browsing mode in Firefox 91 to auto-update HTTP to HTTPS whenever possible, it integrated support for auto-upgrading to HTTPS using HTTPS RR as Alt-Svc headers.

The Alt-Svc header "allows a server to indicate that a particular resource should be loaded from a different server" while appearing to the user that it was still loaded from the same server.

Other changes

Full-color level support for video playback on many systems.
Open alerts in tabs don't cause performance issues in other tabs that are using the same process.
Redesigned certificate error pages for "better user experience".
Mac: the Mac OS Share options are now accessible from the Firefox File menu.
Mac: support for images containing ICC v4 profiles enabled.
Mac: VoiceOver reports buttons and links marked as "expanded" correctly using aria-expanded attribute.
Mac: Bookmark toolbar menus follow Firefox's visual styles now.

Developer Changes

Audio output device access is protected by the speaker-selection feature policy.
Default HTTP accept header for images has been changed to image/avif,image/webp,*/* to support the AVIF format.

Enterprise changes

None

Known Issues

None listed.

Security updates / fixes

Security updates are revealed after the official release of the web browser. You find the information published here after release.

Outlook

Firefox 93.0 Stable is scheduled to be released on October 5, 2021. Firefox 78.15 ESR will be released on the same day; it is the last version of the 78.x branch, which is the last to support Adobe Flash and Mac Os X versions 10.11 and older.

Recently Reviewed Firefox extensions

none

Recent Firefox news and tips

Additional information / sources

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