Firefox 105 is out: here is what is new

Mozilla published Firefox Stable and Firefox ESR updates on September 20, 2022. Firefox 105 Stable and Firefox 102.3 ESR are the new versions that are now available.

The main improvement in Firefox 105 is the better handling of low-memory situations on Windows and Linux, resulting in fewer crashes.

Firefox development versions receive updates around the same time. Firefox Beta and Developer editions move to Firefox 106, and Firefox Nightly to version 107.

Executive Summary

Firefox 105 and Firefox 102.3 ESR fix security issues.
Firefox 91 ESR is no longer supported. Firefox 91.x ESR will be upgraded to Firefox 102 ESR automatically.

Firefox 105 download and update

firefox 105

Firefox 105 Stable updates become available on September 20, 2022. Note that they may not yet be available when you are reading this article, as it is published early on September 20.

Most Firefox installations receive the update automatically thanks to the built-in updating feature of the browser. The update may not happen immediately though. Users may select Menu > Help > About Firefox to run a manual check for updates.

Firefox displays the installed version and checks for updates. Updates that are found will be downloaded and installed.

Direct downloads are also available, follow the links below to Mozilla's download website, to download the new version of the browser.

Firefox 105.0 new features and improvements

Firefox 105 is a smaller release that is a bit light on new features. One of the main changes in Firefox 105 is that Mozilla managed to reduce the number of out-of-memory crashes of the browser on Windows significantly in the release.

The, rather simple sounding tweak, ensures that the browser's main process is not touched when the system runs out of memory. Instead, content processes are first on the chopping block to free up memory. Killing the main process kills the entire browser, while the termination of content processes crashes only the webpage open in it.

Similarly, Mozilla notes that it has improved the out-of-memory behavior of the Firefox browser on Linux as well:

Firefox is less likely to run out of memory on Linux and performs more efficiently for the rest of the system when memory runs low.

Other changes and fixes

The print preview dialog has an option to print only the current page directly from it.
On touch-based Windows devices, Firefox supports swipe to navigate touch gestures now (two fingers on a touchpad swiped left or right to perform history back or forward).
Improved touchpad scrolling on macOS.

Developer

Searching in large arrays is two times faster in Firefox 105 thanks to the replacing of array.includes and array.indexOf with an optimized SIMD version.
Firefox is compatible with the User Timing L3 specification.
Firefox supports partitioned service workers in third-party contexts.
Support for defining persistent scripts using scripting has been added.
The TextDecoderStream and TextEncoderStream interfaces, part of the Encoding API, are now supported,
Support for the Offscreen Canvas DOM API with full context and font support