Mozilla plans to release Firefox 141 to the public today. The new version of the open source Firefox web browser is a smaller release, at least when you look at the changes it makes. The highlight is a new local AI feature that is designed to help users manage tabs better. It also introduces a few nice-to-have usability changes and security fixes.
As always, all Firefox ESR editions are also updated. This means that Firefox 140.1 ESR, Firefox 128.13 ESR and Firefox 115.26 ESR will all be released today as well.
You can check my review of Firefox 140 here.
Firefox 141: the major changes and new features
AI-enhanced tab groups
Mozilla introduced tab groups in Firefox some time ago. The feature enables users to sort open tabs into groups to improve manageability. This is done via drag & drop, or by right-clicking on a tab and selecting the "Add Tab to New Group" option from the context menu.
Each group comes with a color and a name, and tab groups work both in horizontal and vertical tab bar mode.
The new feature uses local AI to identify similar tabs to bundle them together in a tab group. Here is how you access it:
- Right-click on the tab group identifier in Firefox.
- Select "Suggest more tabs for group".
- Confirm the terms (once).
- Accept or decline tabs that Firefox identified.
The feature worked considerably well during tests, especially for tabs with matching domain names. If you open several Ghacks articles, Firefox's feature will (very likely) mark all of them for inclusion in a tab group, when you make use of the feature. Mozilla says that the AI reads the titles and descriptions of the tabs for its suggestions.
Good news is that the user stays in control. You can uncheck any tab that you don't want included in the tab group.
Who benefits the most from the feature? Firefox users who use tab groups and have lots of tabs open in the browser. If you want to create tab groups to manage tabs better, this one may be useful to you.
The feature is rolling out over time. You can enable it right away by setting browser.
Other changes and fixes
- The tools area at the bottom of vertical tabs can now be adjusted to take up more or less space on the tab bar.
- Firefox uses less memory on Linux and no longer requires a restart after package manager applied an update.
- Users from Brazil, Spain, and Japan can use address autofill now.
- You can convert units in the Firefox address bar. It supports converting units of length, temperature, mass, force and angular measurements, as well as timezones. Just type, e.g. 24 C to F without pressing Enter, and Firefox should display the result of the conversion as a suggestion.
- New languages are available for translation: Albanian, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Kannada, Malay, Malayalam, Persian, Telugu
- Firefox on Windows 11 uses the system provided font icons for the caption buttons.
Developer changes
- The HTML webkitdirectory attribute and the corresponding HTMLInputElement.webkitdirectory property are now partially supported on Firefox Android
- The "cache" directive of the Clear-Site-Data response header now clears the bfcache (backwards-forwards cache).
- The persistentDeviceId property of the PointerEvent interface is now supported.
- The scrollMargin property of the IntersectionObserver interface is now supported.
- he closedBy attribute of the HTMLDialogElement interface and the corresponding closedby attribute of the <dialog> element are supported.
- Adds the i18n.getPreferredSystemLanguages method to retrieve the preferred locales of the operating system.
- Support for Cookies Having Independent Partitioned State (CHIPS) is now re-enabled, allowing developers to opt a cookie into storage partitioning per top-level site.
Enterprise changes
- Pocket policies in FirefoxHome restored for compatibility.
- Preferences policy supports the preferences mathml.disabled, svg.context-properties.content.enabled, svg.disabled, webgl.disabled, webgl.force-enabled, xpinstall.enabled, and security.csp.reporting.enabled as well as prefs beginning with privacy.baselineFingerprintingProtection or privacy.fingerprintingProtection now.
Security updates / fixes
Mozilla patched a total of 18 different security vulnerabilities and potential vulnerabilities in Firefox 141. The aggregate severity rating of the release is high and there is no word on exploits in the wild. Still probably a good idea to update asap.
Firefox 141.0 download and update
Most Firefox installations should be updated automatically today and in the coming days. You can check the installed version by selecting Menu > Help > About Firefox.
Manual downloads are also provided on Mozilla's official website.
Outlook
Firefox 142 is scheduled for a release on August 19th, 2025. Firefox 128.14 and Firefox 140.2 will also be released on that day. Note that Firefox 128.14 is the last release of that ESR branch.
Additional information / resources
Thank you for being a Ghacks reader. The post Firefox 141 introduces local AI to help with tab management appeared first on gHacks Technology News.
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