Mozilla has made changes that happened by default before. Often I have had to find the setting to put it back to how I wanted. I remember when it moved the URL bar to the bottom.

I don't think it is always an easy call to make. Tabs were a significant user experience improvement, but hiding it behind an opt-in would have limited it to people who knew about it.

I use Firefox as main on desktop and mobile. I have noticed messages on upgrade pointing to LLM features. I haven't engaged with them an from thereon haven't noticed any change because of them.

Saying there are reports of excessive memory or CPU use isn't terribly useful without references to those reports. One such report posted on HN was shown to have been unrelated to the LLM.

Are there any reports actually showing degradation because of LLMs rather than post hoc ergo propter hoc?

But boy does it not add extra effort removing these features every time there’s a new roll-out and it’s not done the best way IMO. I feel as if these features would go down better if Mozilla actually notified the user that they’re available and then offered whether to enable them or not (could have them enabled by default for new users). That way you’re still giving a choice, but in a more respectful manner.

If anyone is interested I’ve gutted all the more obscene stuff out of Waterfox and have instead left the useful ones such a ML translation, which is opt-in.

Related: I feel like onboarding is a lost art, more software should bring back software wizards and UI tours. Feels like you somehow have to intuitively know how something works (unlikely) or do a web search on how to use everything instead of having it shown to you nicely.

Who asked for this? Who wants it? Certainly not the Linux / open-source crowd, and they're just about the only ones who are keeping Firefox alive.

If there's anybody from Mozilla or the Firefox dev team in this thread, I'd be interested to hear the thinking behind this addition.

I think this is why they keep shoving new features at users whether they want them or not, making them incredibly difficult to disable, rather than presenting an option try something new, or even making opting out of features easy and intuitive.

The latter two would lead to fewer users of the feature, which means it risks being removed for not being used by most users. Not to mention having an easy opt-out functionality means its usage can be tracked, which could generate unwanted statistics and make a stakeholder lose face.

I don't feel opposed to them changing the browser in principle--certainly there have been many improvements to web browsers over the years. Is privacy the concern here?

I also think that we in the long run will probably let machines do most tedious browsing for us-- digesting ad-ridden websites, digesting interfaces. The LLM navigates the actual web, presented to maximize revenue and maximize user engagement, time spent on the website etc., but we only see actual content, carefully arranged to be as comprehensible as possible, and if we want to communicate with somebody through a website controlled by others we formulate the message and the LLM submits it.

Example: Put this expression(using lockPref to hardcode the config values) in environment.systemPackages(assuming "with pkgs"):

  (wrapFirefox firefox-unwrapped {

        extraPrefs =
        (
          ''
          lockPref("browser.ml.enable", false);
          lockPref("browser.ml.chat.enabled", false);
          lockPref("browser.ml.chat.hideFromLabs", true);
          lockPref("browser.ml.chat.hideLabsShortcuts", true);
          lockPref("browser.ml.chat.page", false);
          lockPref("browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge", false);
          lockPref("browser.ml.chat.page.menuBadge", false);
          lockPref("browser.ml.chat.menu", false);
          lockPref("browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled", false);
          lockPref("browser.ml.pageAssist.enabled", false);
          lockPref("browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled", false);
          lockPref("browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnable", false);
          lockPref("extensions.ml.enabled", false);
          ''
        );

      })

In the comment section here I see lot of people complaining about the fact it's enabled by default as well as some concerns about resource usage. Could someone experienced in desktop app architecture explain if disabling them functionalities makes Firefox that much faster or using less resouces? I'd assume that those functionalities are kind of loaded on demand?

"AI" became such a keyword that seem to instantly give either positive or negative response, it's also an advertised feature of every second app with many of them just forcing AI into you just because of hype. This doesn't seem to be a case in Firefox - so I highly disagree with the title - the features are there but they don't go into your way if you don't want them, therefore it's easy to just use it, only when needed

When I go to about:config and enter "browser.lm", there's nothing displayed. That's on the latest 144.0.2 release.

Is any of it somehow related to this? https://www.heise.de/en/news/One-API-for-all-Mozilla-ends-LL...

I would think most users would ignore the features they don't like? Idgi

I don't want my browser to be "helpful". I don't want my browser to be "smart" or "featureful" or ""modern"" or """beautiful""".

Firefox has precisely one job: navigate to a URI and display the website or file it describes.

End. Of. Experience.

You're a browser company, please just make a goddamn browser. I'm begging you. I just want to browse the internet in peace and quiet.

I use LibreWolf because IMO vanilla Firefox is just as disgusting and useless as Google Chrome. Using bare Firefox instead of Librewolf is about the same level of disgust and annoyance as browsing without uBlock.

I don't want Mozilla to fail, but Jesus Christ they need to jettison the entire c-suite into the nearest active volcano.

NOTE: Some settings might block too much, edit and use as you please.

https://rentry.co/browserconfigs / https://rentry.org/browserconfigs

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/reconciling-mozillas-missi...

>I would think most non technical users would just use a different browser.

I would think they would list one or two of them under the “alternatives” section…?

Three dots -> Settings -> Page Summaries to disable that.

You just don't understand the eleven-dimensional chess that you have to play to get from 30% marketshare to 2% marketshare. They have to think they have a winning strategy, judging by the way they talk to everybody who criticizes their decisions.

I disable a ton in default FF and even run the unbranded versions so that it's not trialware (FF branded builds all expire when their baked in add-ons CA TLS certs expire). But the LLM translation? That's finally a good feature.

It isn't clear what browser.ml.chat and browser.ml.pageAssist are associated with in terms of features. Does anyone know? I tried disabling all shown in the write-up and local LLM translation still seems to work so I assume it's something else.

but I don't understand why people make such a deal about it

it looks a loot like "I don't like this so it mustn't even exist even if some people like it" mentality

like

- all of this features are opt in, they don't just randomly send your data somewhere or randomly eat your CPI resources (without you having enabled them)

- the smart tab group features(1) are the only very visible and kind dump/useless one, and you can disable them without tweaking internal configs unser "Addons > On-device AI" (but it won't disable the button in the group tabs menu which is used to enable that feature in the first place)

- for many users side translations is an important must have feature, it's one of the AI features, and having a local on-device no data send to servers translation is very desirable (to be fair US users probably don't care nor realize it matters, but it really matters) (To be fair the OP didn't disable this either)

- for increasingly many users integration with chat bots (e.g. ChatGPT) is a must have browser feature(2). The integration is also only visible in a context menu(3) and hidden in the a selector for the side bar and needs to be explicitly setup before it does anything. So a feature some people want and treat as must have and now can have and for everyone else it's pretty much out of the way and not pushed onto you at all. So why insists that it's not okay to have it even in a selector hardly any power users will ever use (because the other options there are bookmarks, and history, both with well known widely used keyboard shortcuts)

- the preview was a "Labs" (i.e. experimental preview) feature you have to explicitly enable and then use the right hot key to use, and it's one of this "some people expect this feature in 2025" features (but not sure what happened to it, it's neither in Labs nor enabled in any FF browser I have, so maybe they discontinued it)

(1): They IMHO are pretty dump and seem more like a way to setup the whole infrastructure around them with a trivial to implement feature then a in depth feature mozilla cares about. I guess.

(2): On HN it often seems like only enthusiasts and not many non-tech people use ChatGPT and co. _That is not true at all_. When it comes to "simple" ChatGPT usage far more non technical users use it then technical one. Like for dump stuff like shopping list, holiday check lists, etc. The problem OpenAI has isn't that they don't have a lot of users, it's that they need a absurd amount of high paying users. But the tasks most non-tech people use generic ChatGPT for aren't worth a lot. Like even the Plus plan is a "only if you are wealthy enough to burn 20 bucks every month without caring" option in such a context and the Pro plan just absurd.

(3): Is anyone except non technical users still using browsers context menus in a way where a "Ask AI Chat-Bot" entry matters???? Like copy, past, undo, redo, select all have trivial short cuts. Language/spell check is rarely touched and inspect has a short cut where you press Q after right clicking.

but not on my machine