Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

Post by deltoidmaximus » Tue, Feb 24, 2026, 3:16 PM UTC

NoboruWataya wrote: post #287

mhher wrote: post #278

Am I the only one who absolutely adores the local based translation feature? I use it regularly and its so good.

Yes, I really like it. I wish they let extensions access it directly but it seems they don't (yet, at least). I'm also a bit surprised more hasn't been done to distribute it separately as a command line tool as I think something like that would be very helpful. I have seen a couple of attempts to put a CLI wrapper around it but they are third-party and seem to not be well maintained or documented.

Post by mort96 » Tue, Feb 24, 2026, 3:21 PM UTC

prmoustache wrote: post #294

mort96 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No battle has been won. Firefox's market share is dwindling, and they're going full steam ahead with turning Firefox into an "AI browser". Yes, they are adding an option to turn off AI features, but I don't want to use an "AI browser with AI features disabled", I want to use a normal web browser. Mozilla is not delivering that. Note that just not bogging down Firefox with AI features is not enough here. Firefox marke…

> Firefox market share has been going downhill for most of my life Firefox market shares are the best of any non OEM browser[1] and is beating competition from a number of OEM browser (like Samsung's one on mobile) and is fairly competitive compared to the desktop version of Safari (only 1% below on desktop market share). Yes market share have been going downhill but mostly because they were abnormaly high for someth…

Post by brendoelfrendo » Tue, Feb 24, 2026, 3:24 PM UTC

blibble wrote: post #303

celsoazevedo wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to be in charge of a project like this. You're criticized no matter what you do. The old UI was criticized by some for being outdated, a mix of old and new styles, didn't fit well with new OS/app styles, etc. It was crap. So they update the UI and it's still crap... for other users. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

the people still using a fat client are likely doing it because they don't like change edit: I say this MYSELF as a thunderbird user! I don't want an "new experience" every 9 months, and having to explain it to my parents

Post by e40 » Tue, Feb 24, 2026, 3:28 PM UTC

mmsc wrote: post #189

In addition to completely disabling AI, I found the following setting extremely convinent to disable in about:config. They clutter up my right-click on a link or on text selection. browser.translations.select.enable dom.text_fragments.enabled privacy.query_stripping.strip_on_share.enabled devtools.accessibility.enabled Now if only I could get rid of "Print selection" and "Services" when right-clicking, too (on MacOS)

Post by mort96 » Tue, Feb 24, 2026, 3:29 PM UTC

shakna wrote: post #203

input_sh wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you right-click on the AI button and click on "remove", but that's a whole different discussion than what you asked in the previous comment. It's also why I really don't understand the need for a kill switch to begin with (other than pleasing annoying users), you don't need to wait for it. You can already get rid of the chatbot integration, there's a remove button already. It's also kind of annoyingly easy to mi…

Because what people want is not an opt-out, like Mozilla have given, but an opt-in. This is the grudging half-measure. Many would have preferred the updates to come with a form asking for on or off. It didn't, so they complained, and this was the answer.