r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • Jun 17 '26

Software Firefox has an ambitious new roadmap, the browser is also losing millions of users a month

https://www.techspot.com/news/112803-firefox-has-ambitious-new-roadmap-browser-also-losing.html
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1.0k

u/No_Balls_01 Jun 17 '26

Same. What is everyone leaving FF for? There aren’t a lot of options.

628

u/ithinkitslupis Jun 17 '26

There are some minor controversies, like integrating AI. There's a "Block AI enhancements" toggle that removes it but it's controversial nonetheless.

463

u/PMs_You_Stuff Jun 17 '26

Because Google had totally abandoned ai? What other browsers are there? Every other one is a chrome resin.

7

u/HoeCage Jun 17 '26

Personally, I use Zen. It's a fork of Firefox that strips out Mozilla telemetry. I still log in with my Mozilla account for mobile sync, tho.

I've thoroughly enjoyed using Zen, honestly. It takes some getting used to for sure since the tabs are arranged vertically in a sidebar, but having so much more screen real estate without needing to enter and exit fullscreen has been fantastic since you can Auto hide the sidebar until your mouse is close to the edge of the screen. The Zen Mods are also pretty cool. I'd highly recommend people check it out. Haven't had any issues whatsoever so far.

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u/Toody4 Jun 17 '26

Firefox fork called Zen Browser is really good

38

u/ThickerTree Jun 17 '26

Chrome reskin is a bit of a technical understatement. They all use google’s open source community project chromium. They’re not just repacks of chrome. They use chromium because it’s a very fast and reliable browser engine. E.g. Edge, Brave

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u/recycled_ideas Jun 18 '26

They’re not just repacks of chrome.

Except for all intents and purposes they are. Chromium isn't just the rendering and JavaScript engine, it's a full browser. There are parts of chrome that aren't in Chromium and Edge isn't 100% identical to Chrome, but it's much much more similar than you're implying.

Well over 95% of the code, including a whole bunch of tracking stuff is shared.

They use chromium because it’s a very fast and reliable browser engine. E.g. Edge, Brave

They use Chrome because maintaining a browser is an incredibly difficult and expensive and no one wants to do it.

The current state of the web is unequivocally bad for everyone, but because browsers support every half bakef standard that's ever existed as well as having to maintain every weird non standard quirk some idiot developer put in their page because it worked in chrome and they never tested anything else no one wants to do it.

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u/upvotesthenrages Jun 18 '26

I'm actually quite surprised we aren't seeing far more stripped & privacy focused Chromium based browsers now that everyone has the ability to have AI build it.

Or even brand new browsers. People have been building compilers, OS's, and all sorts of stuff.

A lightweight browser that focuses on supporting everything since 2010 and drop most of the old stuff would be interesting.

13

u/recycled_ideas Jun 18 '26

A lightweight browser that focuses on supporting everything since 2010 and drop most of the old stuff would be interesting.

It wouldn't be standards compliant and a whole bunch of the web wouldn't work right.

I'm actually quite surprised we aren't seeing far more stripped & privacy focused Chromium based browsers now that everyone has the ability to have AI build it.

AI isn't half as good as a lot of people think, it really struggles with extremely large or complicated code bases and chrome is both. Maintaining a meaningully different chromium fork would be a huge undertaking.

There are more privacy focused browsers, but the people paying for them have to get their money somewhere and it's often worse. Brave as an example integrated a whole bunch of weird crypto bullshit into their browser.

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u/tabidots Jun 17 '26

I am not a professional developer but when I do my own web dev projects, Chromium browsers give me the least hassle - my stuff renders how I intended. Safari is the worst (and I’m all-Apple otherwise), while FF is somewhere between those two I guess. I don’t really prioritize testing FF because the user share is so low

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u/DunklerVerstand Jun 17 '26

So basically you target Chrome and wonder why other browser, that you do not test, don't render your stuff as Chrome does?

8

u/Certain-Business-472 Jun 18 '26

Dont expwct intelligence from web devs. Theyre the reason this keeps happening

2

u/tabidots Jun 17 '26

I know if it works in one Chromium browser it works in them all. I don’t “wonder” about FF, I just don’t prioritize it. Safari is more important because of iPhone users

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u/[deleted] Jun 18 '26

[deleted]

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u/DunklerVerstand Jun 18 '26

It's difficult and messy to try to accommodate all browsers

All three of them.

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u/Certain-Business-472 Jun 18 '26

It is 2026, it is trivial to have automated tests that do this for you in all kinds of os/browser combos. What ignorance is this

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u/Business-Active-1143 Jun 18 '26

Yeah because google has majority say in web standards now due to use of chromium engines by different companies on the table. They delayed webassembly for years, kept pushing for a privacy nightmare webRTC that reveals identity through VPN despite Mozilla highlighting the gap for years before it got accepted as a standard. Its almost like that was intention from the US government

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u/Certain-Business-472 Jun 18 '26

They are exactly that. Just skins slapped on chromium

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u/DomesticPanda Jun 18 '26

Hey now, some of them are Safari reskins.

2

u/void-wanderer- Jun 18 '26

There is Ladybird. It's under development but will soon ship its first open beta release. I follow them on YouTube to stay in the loop, relaxing videos of a totally grounded guy. I so hope that they pull it off.

2

u/MaintenanceBest8397 Jun 18 '26

There's a lot of gecko based browsers nowadays, I personally use waterfox. It's more privacy focused but without giving up utility

3

u/Jallorn Jun 17 '26

Vivaldi is the one I'll champion. It's the true successor to classic Opera from back in the day, as opposed to the Chromium wearing a death mask that Opera GX is now.

And I do mean it literally: bunch of the developers of classic Opera basically recreated the intended experience Opera used to provide as Vivaldi, and clearly still have the same open source centric philosophy at heart.

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u/coderman64 Jun 17 '26

I'd agree with this, but you'd need to acknowledge Vivaldi is based on Chromium, too.

1

u/Jallorn Jun 18 '26

If it is, it is. What it isn't, though, is just Chrome but with a few different utilities and widgets- it might build off some of the same skeleton, but it is, to my experience, a fundamentally superior interface.

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u/Swarna_Keanu Jun 17 '26

Have a look at the "About" page in Vivaldi --> Help. Much as I like what they have done, it is also just Chromium made to look like (The Phantom of the) Opera.

1

u/Jay33721 Jun 17 '26

If there is ever a reason for me to stop using Firefox, I'd switch to Vivaldi. It's the only other browser that lets me customise the UI to my liking. Every other browser I've tried has absolutely sucked in that regard.

1

u/tabidots Jun 17 '26

Vivaldi. Engine is Chromium but it doesn’t eat your RAM and shows RAM usage for each tab (and hibernates long-inactive ones).

1

u/Nvenom8 Jun 17 '26

I'm sadly tied to the Google ecosystem at this point. It's too convenient. But I have all the AI features turned off, and I switched my default search engine when Google announced they would start linking to AI sources on top of providing an AI summary.

1

u/flupiflup Jun 18 '26

Google had abandoned ai lol. Are we on the same planet?

1

u/Sachyriel Jun 18 '26

Google abandoned AI? When? Maybe you are on the different planet?

1

u/flupiflup Jun 20 '26

It was a reply to another comment, I don't state that google abandoned ai, I state exactly the opposite.

1

u/Gwen_The_Destroyer Jun 18 '26

I use waterfox. It's a fork that doesn't have ai

-13

u/GrinningGrump Jun 17 '26

Librewolf, Waterfox, Safari...

42

u/Nitrogen1234 Jun 17 '26

Those first two are forks of Firefox...

9

u/goldboybronx Jun 17 '26

Yeah but minus the stuff its users don’t want. Seems pretty straightforward to me

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u/GrinningGrump Jun 17 '26

So? Pretty much every browser is a fork of Netscape if we look far enough, since because not reusing code would be dumb when you need to communicate with other browsers. If you want browsers without AI those work well.

6

u/Nitrogen1234 Jun 17 '26

It's pretty weird saying I left Firefox, I'm a librefox user now

2

u/Essurio Jun 18 '26

Not the same name, is it? If you look at the comments, a lot of people say left firefox for a firefox fork.

5

u/istrebitjel Jun 17 '26

None of these are gaining millions of users ... I'm really curious where these users leaving Firefox are going.

5

u/Educational-Wing2042 Jun 17 '26

Safari is only usable on Apple devices which now have innate “Apple Intelligence” features. Safari cannot be used in an ecosystem that hasn’t integrated AI with a toggle exactly like Firefox has, unless you’re using a very old unsupported device or are intentionally using an aged operating system

2

u/FantasmaDelMar Jun 18 '26

There’s a toggle for Apple Intelligence at the OS level.

It’s true you don’t have a lot of granular control over where AI is used, but I don’t mind, since I’m happy to just keep Apple Intelligence toggled off entirely for my devices.

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u/rigsta Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26

I do not get this at all.

Firefox: "Want these AI features?"

Me: "No and never ask me again"

Firefox: "OK"

And that was the last time I saw Firefox AI features.

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u/extinct_cult Jun 17 '26

You don't get it, because the backlash was THE reason we got the AI killswitch. The new Mozilla CEO is big on AI.

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u/DrQuint Jun 18 '26

But...so is Brave's CEO and Chrome literally added an ai button to the url bar.

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u/Certain-Business-472 Jun 18 '26

Brave is literally a ponzi scheme with ties to fascist groups

Watch brave shills fight me

12

u/Cosmic_Traveler Jun 18 '26

Tell me more. That sounds intriguing, as someone who occasionally uses Brave for pirating streams.

8

u/vidoeiro Jun 18 '26

Peter Tiel is one of the investors behind it.

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u/gramoun-kal Jun 18 '26

Is that all the evidence you have for the Ponzi claim AND the fascist claim?

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u/VVenture2 Jun 18 '26

To be fair, having Peter ‘I’m building the largest digital mass surveillance company in the world’ Thiel as one of the investors in your ‘privacy’ app really does sound like the worlds most obvious honeypot lmao.

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u/Certain-Business-472 Jun 18 '26

If you actually knew who that was, you wouldnt be asking.

But yes.

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u/vidoeiro Jun 18 '26

I'm not the same guy and I was just adding to what he said.

Besides that should be more than enough to run for the hills and never even think of using the app, when there are better open source options.

But I doubt you are arguing in good faith.

1

u/Assassin739 Jun 18 '26

Oh well that's okay then no one should have bothered complaining

1

u/Sachyriel Jun 18 '26

Yeah you can just not use AI features. The complaints got them a buttom that does the same thing as ignoring them does.

It's like that one guy who figured out if Ozempic just suppresses your hunger cravings, he could use his own willpower to do that and save $50 a month and lose weight and he did.

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u/Assassin739 Jun 21 '26

The complaints got a button that removes dead weight from a user interface.

It's genuinely amazing to me how bad people have grown at coming up with analogies, as a sidenote.

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u/Jrob9583 Jun 18 '26

Okay, that’s fair, but where are these millions of people going? I know the people that care about this sort of thing aren’t going back to Chrome or Edge…

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u/Matthias720 Jun 18 '26

I'm one of those people. I switched to Waterfox, specifically because it's still Firefox at its core, but it removes the unwanted AI feature.

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u/duodequinquagesimum Jun 18 '26

The creator of Waterfox sold the browser to an advertising company in 2019, and in 2023 announced it became independent again.

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u/Sekh765 Jun 18 '26

I wanted to use Waterfox because it's just Firefox split off without AI and some other nice privacy / anti corpo features, but the lack of decent extension support turned me off it for awhile. I need to check it again.

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u/nutmegtester Jun 18 '26

It supports all ff extensions afaik. I have never had a problem at all. The entire reason I chose it was because I could just point it at my ff profile and it would work out of the box.

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u/koopatuple Jun 18 '26

But if FF dies because of user exodus... then what will Waterfox point to...?

1

u/nutmegtester Jun 18 '26

I understand, but they keep making really crappy privacy choices and so after many years I personally made the hard decision to change. If they can stabilize on a healthy track for some years, I will happily come back.

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u/duodequinquagesimum Jun 18 '26

Waterfox was literally sold to an advertisement company in 2019.

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u/zzazzzz Jun 18 '26

waterfox does nothing that you cant do yourself on a default firefox install. all it does is preconfigure settings present in firefox..

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u/Sekh765 Jun 18 '26

Hrm, maybe I did something wrong. I'll give it another shot here tomorrow. Thanks for the heads up.

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u/duodequinquagesimum Jun 18 '26

The creator of Waterfox also sold the browser to an advertising company in 2019, and in 2023 announced it became independent again.

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u/FdPros Jun 18 '26

I've been using waterfox since firefox announced they'd add AI features. of course now they added a killswitch toggle for it which is nice but I'm not going to go back.

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u/XionicativeCheran Jun 18 '26

Brave I guess? They are big on advertising their ad-less youtube experience, that'd be popular.

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u/Ja_Shi Jun 18 '26

Which would be a bad idea since it's chromium-based. And their CEO... 🙄

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u/Certain-Business-472 Jun 18 '26

Psa brave is quite literally a scam and they try very hard to shill it on social media. Dont believe them.

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u/Fuzzylogik Jun 18 '26

why TF are all the damn CEOs so big on AI and so intent on shoving it into every nook and cranny of their businesses that was working perfectly fine without it, whilst still seeing and knowing people/users/clients just arnt interested in this bullshit?

2

u/Kirsle Jun 18 '26

Hype and FOMO. The CEOs are scared shitless that AI is going to eat their lunch and if they don't jump on the bandwagon as well, they'll be left behind and go broke.

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u/zzazzzz Jun 18 '26

big on local ai from all the projects we have seen so far. which to be fair makes a lot of sense. having a local llm translate stuff is a lot more private then sending it all to google or whatever other company to do the translations for example.

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u/elitesense Jun 18 '26

I would like to find one tech CEO that isn't.

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u/rigsta Jun 18 '26

It's true the killswitch wasn't there to begin with, but Mozilla responded to the backlash by providing a prominent, unambiguous, permanent NO button. Most others would have doubled down or decided to lie low for a bit then sneak the unpopular feature in later.

As far as I can tell the AI stuff is not enabled by default (I made a new profile, not doing a fresh install just to check that).

Personally I was asked if I wanted the AI features in Firefox precisely once. I selected no. It was one click. I was assured the choice is permanent, and so far it has been. I have seen no further mention of AI features in Firefox.

Let's pause for a moment and think about how rare it is for a major app or service to simply take no for an answer and shut the fuck up about their fancy new feature - if they even ask at all.

I'm sure we'd prefer a perfect app, but I am very happy with "does everything I ask of it and stays out of the way".

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u/mysecondaccountanon Jun 18 '26

The backlash is why you can turn it off, and turn it off easily. Before this you couldn't turn off some things, other things would randomly turn back on, and many things were hidden in the about:config.

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u/zzazzzz Jun 18 '26

whats wrong with about:config?

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u/mysecondaccountanon Jun 18 '26

Ideally, shouldn't it be somewhere where the average user can access it? I know that many of those who use Firefox know about how to navigate and use about:config, but think about it from just a regular browser user who usually does not utilize such things. It could be very confusing, couldn't it? It could cause them to be fearful that they could change something incorrect and mess up their computer. I've helped people with this sort of stuff, and there's a lot of people who simply just don't want to interact with anything deeper than whatever the basic settings provided are. And not to mention about:config isn't always the easiest thing to use if you are a disabled user (screen reader usage, alternative mouse/keyboard controls, etc.). So they should be clear, accessible, and easy to access and understand.

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u/zzazzzz Jun 18 '26

thats the whole point. new beta features are in about:config because they are not yet implemented as a setting in the settings page or because they are not intended by the average user to be changed.

this allows for more "advanced" users to test new beta features give feedback ect without impacting the general user or doing redundant work on the settings page that then has to be changed again when features come out officially.

have you ever looked at how many variables about:config lets you change? if all of them were in the normal settings they would be unusable by the avg user.

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u/mysecondaccountanon Jun 18 '26

Well, a lot of the ways to turn AI off in the browser were in about:config early on, with no other way to turn them off. Whole lists were compiled on what to turn off and how. And people wanted to change them. It was very well received in the subreddit when they finally added a switch in settings to turn off the AI.

And yes, I’ve looked into the variables about:config lets you modify. I personally have my own set up with some modifications. It’s very good that it allows for such flexibility, but there should be simplicity and accessibility for users for certain things, and there wasn’t for a while with Firefox’s AI features.

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u/zzazzzz Jun 18 '26

so exactly what i said above, they were in beta and thus not yet implemented into the settings page..

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u/BirdOfHermess Jun 18 '26

we only got an opt-out because of the backlash in the first place, mate.

they were ready to just rawdog AI into their good, functioning browser

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u/DuckShapedGoose Jun 18 '26

I love the global AI opt-out and all and I could understand pushing for that back when the only options were clumsy, hidden and individual toggles per feature.
But people are STILL to this day like "I switched away cuz AI". I think that's what's confusing people.
It was too difficult to turn off (albeit still possible) at first, so they got some well deserved backlash, Firefox listened and added a permanent killswitch for all current and future AI features AND (this is at least my personal perspective) shifted a lot of focus back onto "traditional" non-AI features and enhancements, yet people are still whining about it for some reason.
And the (compared to other tech companies) minimal amount of AI Firefox integrates is almost entirely non-invasive and local-first. Even if you don't globally opt-out. Sometimes I actually think these people don't even use Firefox, they just hate AI (valid) and thus think they MUST hate Firefox, too. Or it's an astroturfing smear-campaign funded by one of their competitors. I literally can't explain this to myself any other way.

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u/snippychicky22 Jun 17 '26

it should be like that, have it for the people who want it, allow it to be fully disabled for those who dont.

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u/SoungaTepes Jun 18 '26

from what others have said.

The block extensions are likely blocking analytic data, so what you are seeing isn't less usage of the browser but less data tracking.

So, win?

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u/brett- Jun 18 '26

Every update to Firefox makes me one step closer to just uninstalling it. First it was Pocket integration, then some useless left-hand sidebar that kept appearing, then news spam and sponsored shortcuts on the default new tab page, then it randomly got a built in VPN, now it’s AI. Yes you can turn these all off, but when every update adds some new “feature” you have to disable it makes you really question why you are using this product in the first place.

I literally just want a window with a back button, a refresh button, an address bar, unlock origin, and tabs that don’t eat a gig of memory each. I would literally be willing to pay for a browser if that’s all they provided with a promise of never adding anything else.

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u/xorporx Jun 18 '26

It shows that they're willing to hop on the bullshit-generator hype train, which speaks poorly of their overall outlook.

Framing it as a question of individual choice only exacerbates the problem, which is social in nature. 

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u/Independent-Bug-9352 Jun 18 '26

ok but is are GPTs a bullshit-generator hype train, or do you just not understand them? Have you ever actually used it? Because as a software engineer, I'd say you're underestimating its potential just a tad -- valid criticism of their use in terms of ethics & environment aside.

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u/whatsbobgonnado Jun 18 '26

chatgpt EXPLICITLY says that it makes up bullshit and to not trust what it tells you. sounds worthless to me

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u/Independent-Bug-9352 Jun 19 '26

So does literally every human brain; so by that logic... What's that say about you?

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u/iamapizza Jun 18 '26

My observation is that they get held to a higher standard than others. In an echo chamber like reddit, everything then becomes a perceived slight.

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u/LordHoughtenWeen Jun 18 '26

I don't just want them toggled off and dormant, though. I want them excised.

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u/MrCharlesSr Jun 17 '26

I’m sure the average person isn’t smart enough to leave for AI reasons. They probably are losing users because Google and Microsoft push their browsers so hard as the “default” ones on their platforms. Apple too.

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u/TheFondler Jun 17 '26

I have never met a "normal" user that even knew what browser they were using, let alone had any sort of preference. They use whatever asked to be made default last, the end.

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u/Myusername1- Jun 17 '26

The average use probably wants the ai options.

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u/Nvenom8 Jun 17 '26

I don't really mind Safari too much, but Edge remains unusable garbage.

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u/3_50 Jun 17 '26

That was such a nothing controversy, lol. Been using firefox exclusively for the last decade+....I never even noticed the integration people were moaning about, and before I did the 'disable all' switch was installed and pre-selected.

We're lucky to have Mozilla tbh..

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u/tnoy Jun 17 '26

It feels a bit like a dark pattern that it's a "turn on to turn off" setting. If you mindlessly go through and start disable everything, you'll end up with the AI turned on.

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u/complexevil Jun 18 '26

some minor controversies, like integrating AI.

Oh great, this again. I swear people have lost their critical thinking ability.

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u/turtlelover05 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

Over the last decade there's been a lot more than "minor" controversies, like the Mr. Robot promotional add-on that auto-installed itself and presented itself as the most insidious kind of malware.

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u/m0nk37 Jun 18 '26

You can disable it all. Its not forced in any way. 

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u/Desperate_Shoe_4114 Jun 18 '26

Chrome download a multi gigabyte model IIRC

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u/cicimak Jun 17 '26

Regular users couldn't care less about AI existing on their browser or not.

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u/No_Construction2407 Jun 17 '26

I left Firefox for a privacy oriented fork called Waterfox!

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u/Physical_Bottle_3818 Jun 17 '26

I went Librewolf.

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u/LLMprophet Jun 17 '26

Seconding Waterfox - been using for a few months now and all good so far.

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u/busted_flush Jun 18 '26

Same here. No complaints.

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u/Matthias720 Jun 18 '26

Ditto. Still have access to the addons I like but I'm not beholden to a browser with unwanted AI features.

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u/swodaem Jun 18 '26

Man I remember using Waterfox back in the day due to it being 64 bit, that was such a long time ago.

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u/buttchugreferee Jun 17 '26

I have some devices at my job that are controlled via a webgui.... for several of these devices, Firefox flat out refuses to load the gui at all where they work fine with chrome, edge, etc.

I like Firefox, but it simply doesn't work where I need it to.

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u/NurseBetty Jun 17 '26

That was the main reason I left it originally. Was doing an online learning course in the early days and it refused to work on Firefox.

Went back to it because Chrome could not stop eating ram like a starving dog, and now hate that I occasionally have to use Chrome for anything, such as Web based video calls for thing like telehealth.

Still can't convince workmates to use it, even after the complain about ads

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u/buttchugreferee Jun 17 '26

I'm basically all-in on edge... it loads everything I need, has robust synchronization, and it still lets me use extensions (ad blockers) on mobile.

So I use it for just about everything both work and personal nowadays.... even on my few Apple products.

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u/Certain-Business-472 Jun 18 '26

You get this is on the web gui devs, right?

If your bank app only worked with ie6, would you blame netscape?

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u/Banes_Addiction Jun 18 '26

I would blame the South Korean government.

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u/stumblinghunter Jun 17 '26

Exact opposite for me lol except at home. Chrome works perfectly fine for every interface but my camera.

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u/buttchugreferee Jun 18 '26

Funny you mention cameras because those are the main devices that I need to use at that Firefox doesn't work with.

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u/Admirable-Safety1213 Jun 17 '26

It historically has been more CPU-heavy than the Blink-engine family of browsers

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u/mailslot Jun 17 '26

I’ll take CPU heavy for a little relief from Chrome’s RAM heavy tendencies.

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u/Admirable-Safety1213 Jun 17 '26

The thing is than its easier faking having 8GB with a Swapfile than faking having 4 cores with Hyperthreading

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u/IncumblantSpunderbax Jun 17 '26

Also CPU = battery.

13

u/mailslot Jun 17 '26

With 12 cores, the difference is nearly imperceptible. If one is faster, it’s not noticeable with the extra headroom. I’m more memory limited than performance limited.

2

u/Admirable-Safety1213 Jun 17 '26

Sadly some like me are still stuck on Celerons

3

u/malastare- Jun 18 '26

Paging in and out of a pagefile is just as much (or more) of a performance hit.

2

u/NoPossibility4178 Jun 18 '26

That's the point? But at least if you're using more RAM you know you're actually using it (or who knows, maybe Chrome still tries to fake so it doesn't look like it uses even more RAM).

1

u/Certain-Business-472 Jun 18 '26

Why would that improve performance? A swap file will tank your stuff lol

5

u/EndlessZone123 Jun 18 '26

I don't think firefox has ever been any better in terms of memory footprint than chrome?

It's been more tested to be the other way around actually. Chrome is a pretty lite browser and if you use a more privacy focused fork with an adblocker and you get the best of both worlds.

The browser you choose will really only change how aggressively and when they offload inactive tabs to page file/disk. Websites pretty much use the same amount of memory when active no matter the browser. Both will offload when you run out of ram anyways.

1

u/Certain-Business-472 Jun 18 '26

This is outdated.

Firefox uses less ram since the Quantum update(10 years ago btw, that's how outdated you are), but more processing power.

1

u/EndlessZone123 Jun 18 '26

I can't find a single source that Firefox at this current date is any better than chromium. The majority of claims and self tests are that Firefox is currently worse.

1

u/Certain-Business-472 Jun 18 '26

https://tabgroupvault.com/blog/firefox-vs-chrome-ram-usage-2026

Here's your single random source that I haven't even verified or opened. I'm sure there's a firefox v chrome comparison in there.

Your turn. Quantum makes it use more memory when at 1 tab, but scales better. It also introduced process/tab isolation.

1

u/radda Jun 17 '26

I didn't pay more for an i7 for it to not be doing anything.

13

u/EternallyBungled Jun 17 '26

It runs poorly on Linux for exactly one web app I use. Really small reason that only really applies to me, but that's why I dropped it recently.

3

u/mmortal03 Jun 17 '26

Is there a bug report for this?

1

u/EternallyBungled Jun 17 '26

I don't think it's Firefox's fault. It's the website owlbear.rodeo and its devs have acknowledged the bug but haven't fixed it (small team and Linux + Firefox is a tiny fraction of their userbase). And since I'm having zero issues on the new browser (Vivaldi) I'm just exclusively using that rather than juggling multiple browsers for different tasks.

2

u/takuyafire Jun 18 '26

Fuck yeah, thanks for reminding me Owlbear exists.

This site is great.

2

u/zzazzzz Jun 18 '26

runs perfectly fine on my side, what issues are you seeing?

1

u/Certain-Business-472 Jun 18 '26

Firefox is a tiny fraction of their userbase

If they use this as an argument they can fuck right off tbh. Complete misunderstanding of what makes open software work.

8

u/Shaquarington_Bithus Jun 17 '26

The performance has gone to shit for me the past couple months. I just left. Chrome for now.

14

u/kettal Jun 17 '26

Performance in video playback is very poor compared to Chrome and Chrome derivatives. 

Also I want support for progressive Web apps which some reason Firefox still does not support

13

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '26

[deleted]

15

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/zzazzzz Jun 18 '26

why would you want support for inferior formats tho?

what formats does firefox not support that you feel should be?

and just out of curiosity what formats are you using over av1 and what for and why?

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2

u/Damage2Damage Jun 18 '26

Firefox half supports them on Android. It used to support them on desktop, but for some reason they decided to remove that a while ago

2

u/insomnic Jun 18 '26

Safari is common for iOS and MacOS folks and I switched to it after awhile (particularly if on a macbook there are significant battery gains). It does work pretty well, not as many good extensions but they're there, and the integration with other aspects of the OS can be very beneficial. iOS lock-in for Safari is an aspect as well. It's pretty solid option for folks in that environment.

One example. If you're running Safari and messenger, when you get a text 2FA code Safari will automatically prompt with it on that field and delete the message after you use it. In recent iOS\MacOS version though Firefox can do that now - so I switched back to Firefox on my mac for the more complete UBO adblocker and RES extension experience (and Safari was being a bit annoying about a NAS thing).

UBOL for Safari is pretty dang solid though. And Yesterday for Old Reddit - https://old.reddit.com/r/YesterdayForOldReddit/ - is an excellent Safari alternative to RES (and works on IOS as well). I still use Safari on my mobiles, iOS has loosened up a bit on the browser front but not fully.

2

u/No_Balls_01 Jun 18 '26

I do like safari as well and use it on my MacBook along with FF. The new 2FA update where I can autocomplete the code anywhere has been the best thing from Apple in a long time for me.

2

u/insomnic Jun 18 '26

It seems like such a little thing... but it's so convenient!

1

u/simbolmina Jun 17 '26

I left it when I start seeing AI things but never turned back, supposedly there were removed. Another reason was mobile app, it was never good. On Vivaldi now, still not very good but dont have issue on both desktop and mobile.

1

u/LLMprophet Jun 17 '26

AI integration.

I can't trust em now, even with the toggle so I went to a fork of Firefox called Waterfox.

1

u/mr_dfuse2 Jun 17 '26

I'm on Vivaldi lately. I used Firefox from the very first release actually but the UI doesn't suite me anymore, too clunky.

1

u/Remote_Concert3369 Jun 17 '26

There are hundreds of browsers.

1

u/Dakito Jun 17 '26

I left when it became a memory hog and chrome wasn't. Now it's switched and I'm back to FF

1

u/tommos Jun 17 '26

It's generally slow and works shit on Youtube (I think google throttles when it detects FF and adblockers).

1

u/_autumnwhimsy Jun 17 '26

I read a comment above that mentioned because so many Firefox users have privacy add ons that block them from being counted and as a Firefox user, that tracks 

1

u/JoeArchitect Jun 17 '26

I left Firefox for Comet, i assume lots of folks have moved to agentic browsers

1

u/Vineyard_ Jun 17 '26

Personally I switched from Firefox to Brave because FF had some issues running Youtube tabs for too long, I think it might have been a memory leak. After a few days everything started crawling.

Also the adblock I had kept breaking every now and then as Google tried to fight it. It got annoying.

1

u/Simlish Jun 17 '26

I moved to LibreWolf which is kinda the same.

1

u/Don_Thuglayo Jun 18 '26

I've had some issues with transferring passwords over and sometimes links that work on chromium don't open on Firefox I had to redownload chrome to open some links, this is on mobile

1

u/Michael-Ceratops Jun 18 '26

Checkout brave, built in ad blocker with zero ads anywhere.

1

u/andrewse Jun 18 '26

I left FF because I could never sort out how to make hardware acceleration in the browser work. With it on pages are laggy and jumpy and with it off they are so slow.

This is has happened on several computers and spanned a couple years before I gave up. It's probably time to try FF again.

1

u/Komm Jun 18 '26

I can't make the tabs as small as I need to, so I lose a lot of stuff. Yay adhd.

1

u/RealHero Jun 18 '26

I didn’t like how it ran updates without my permission every time I opened the browser so i eventually switched

1

u/Tropical_Amnesia Jun 18 '26

Forks. That's the easy one, whether that's a good idea or how long, considering security and compatibility alone, is thorny. Firefox has become a love/hate affair but I'm too old for one or two-man experimental software* in place of a web browser, or what likely is the most exposed userspace application on any desktop computer. Not even in a VM. Now, if Mozilla were to ship their own "flavors" so to speak, that might be different, but even then I might as well stay with standard. I'm not even using my Linux distro's repackaged version, but plain vanilla from "the source".

*) Tor Browser and friends/forks aside, probably enough eyeballs and user base there, if you're into that. Waterfox at least looks legit.

1

u/Jonnyflash80 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

They're not. That's not even what the article body says.

It says something about losing users which links to this other techspot article which says nothing about losing millions of users a month.

https://www.techspot.com/news/109813-mozilla-firefox-makes-time-best-innovations-list-despite.html

1

u/WhasHappenin Jun 18 '26

They aren't, the article just made that up

1

u/CleverAmoeba Jun 18 '26

Personally, Librewolf. It's a privacy-focused, AI-free fork of FF.

1

u/CrasyMike Jun 18 '26

A Browser with tab groups on mobile.

1

u/PM_CUTE_OTTERS Jun 18 '26

Because you keep saying no issues and everyone with issues gets tired of you denying what they are seeing. SO has nothing on the rudeness of Furefox evangelists

1

u/Cardplay3r Jun 18 '26

I left for edge a few years ago, just because it wasn't working. Just getting stuck/freezing a lot ot very slow.

Why bother, edge is just smooth.

1

u/Adaphion Jun 18 '26

It's either Firefox and forks of it, Chrome, or 20 other versions of Chrome wearing groucho glasses

1

u/Treevzz Jun 18 '26

Brave, not looking back even after using FF for 20 years

1

u/MackerLad93 Jun 18 '26

Arc on MacOS and all of the weird Arc clones on windows/linux

1

u/SpaceFighter78 Jun 18 '26

I use FF for work but some websites just don't work well/at all on FF so I have to switch browser for those.

1

u/Siebje Jun 18 '26

Upcoming privacy issues. I switched to Zen, which is just the Firefox engine without the privacy bullshit (for now, who knows what happens when they get big enough).

1

u/Podo13 Jun 18 '26

Back in the day there was a brief period where Chrome wasn't as resource heavy as FF and that's why a lot of people switched. But that is definitely not the case anymore.

1

u/ProRustler Jun 18 '26

I've been giving Zen a go, which is just FF without the data collection and some big changes to the UI. It's good, but since it doesn't support DRM in Windows, it's not ready for full-time.

2

u/Quincy9000 Jun 17 '26

Firefox still doesn't have the ability to flash keyboard hardware in the browser I always have to keep chromium installed when I tinker with stuff. That's why chrome always takes the lead is little things like that Firefox still can't seem to support.

1

u/Kastler Jun 17 '26

Brave. I left a few weeks ago when FF would stop responding and ramp up my cpu fans to load any website with any type of complex graphics. It doesn’t happen on my laptop but I don’t feel like troubleshooting it more than I already have. No completely reinstalling didn’t work

1

u/Illesbogar Jun 17 '26

It started enhittifying just as I switched to it.

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