[HN Gopher] Firefox Forcing LLM Features
___________________________________________________________________
Firefox Forcing LLM Features
Author : birdculture
Score : 77 points
Date : 2025-11-08 18:51 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (equk.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (equk.co.uk)
| empiko wrote:
| Where can I find these LLM features in Firefox?
| johnh-hn wrote:
| In your address bar type: about:config
|
| You can search for the configuration options mentioned in the
| article (e.g. browser.ml.enable) in there.
| smir wrote:
| Last update has these features in side bar along with side bar
| tabs, confirmed on windows but couldn't see those on arch with
| sway wm
| Retr0id wrote:
| Right click -> "Ask an AI chatbot"
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| >Alternatives # There are a few projects that are forks of
| firefox with these features removed.
|
| >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...?
| MrAlex94 wrote:
| Waterfox (which I maintain), Tor Browser, Mull (based on Tor)
| and I assume LibreWolf as well?
| dr_pardee wrote:
| https://www.waterfox.net/
| procaryote wrote:
| LibreWolf seems to default most of these off.
| extensions.ml.enabled defaults to true, but the others look
| good
|
| LibreWolf in general is a browser you need to enable things if
| you want them rather than have to disable spyware like for
| mainline firefox
| nrclark wrote:
| Mozilla sure is going out of their way to alienate their
| remaining users. This is going to be Pocket 2.0.
|
| 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.
| noir_lord wrote:
| It annoys me that I have to disable this alongside the
| telemetry I already had to disable (and their Home page crap).
|
| Telemetry should always be _opt in_ not _opt out_ - I don 't
| care how you justify it but especially I don't care when you've
| marketed yourself with "Firefox is built with privacy and
| protection as the default."[1]
|
| [1] https://www.firefox.com/en-US/user-privacy/
|
| When it comes to on by default - If what you are doing amounts
| to "I Am Altering the Deal, Pray I Don't Alter It Any Further."
| then you might have to ask yourself whether you should be doing
| it.
| dzikimarian wrote:
| I want this. I'm Firefox user for years btw.
|
| Most prominent thing is chat in sidebar. It's iframe + a few
| shortcuts. Optional, harmless, using zero resources. Actually
| quite convenient.
|
| Another is perplexity being one of the search providers. This
| is literally config not code. I wonder how many people actually
| removed or even looked at the list of the default search
| providers before that.
|
| I think only real one is ml naming for tabs. Just meh.
|
| Honestly people who deny any usefulness of AI are getting
| dangerously close to flat-earthers by now.
| nativeit wrote:
| Any reason why extensions couldn't fill these niches?
| dzikimarian wrote:
| Personally I don't care - it could be first-party
| extension.
|
| But you could bring up the same argument about vertical
| tabs, tab groups, Firefox Sync or many other things that
| interfere with the browser on much deeper level than
| shortcut to open page in the sidebar.
|
| Is there argument to single out this specific feature apart
| from "AI bad"?
| malnourish wrote:
| Agreed; I wish they would expose how to set your own chat
| provider more easily than about:config, but the sidebar chat
| is easily my most used unique "UX" Firefox feature.
|
| I'd like to see (opt-in) automatic grouping. The kinda-sorta
| grouping it does still requires you to manually engage with
| it.
| t_mann wrote:
| > Honestly people who deny any usefulness of AI are getting
| dangerously close to flat-earthers by now.
|
| What made you jump to that conclusion? My guess about someone
| who's using a non-mainstream browser and figuring out how to
| configure it to their liking is that they're likely also
| using AI in more ways than the standard Chat-Webinterface, eg
| Agents, CLI tools, MCP,... To give an analogy, rolling your
| eyes over brainrot memes isn't denying the usefulness of
| smartphones or messengers either. The underlying sentiment is
| being critical of things that get pushed down our throats
| through A/B-optimized patterns that ultimately serve other
| interests than your own, profits or darker.
| dzikimarian wrote:
| Making a very simple feature and enabling it, with option
| to disable it is no pushing down the throat, nor dark
| pattern.
|
| Please don't compare it to Google or Microsoft products
| that give you "Enable now/Remind later" or just no option
| at all.
| tolciho wrote:
| > Honestly people who deny any usefulness of AI are getting
| dangerously close to flat-earthers by now.
|
| This is a remarkably useless argument; "any" could be
| anything whatsoever, for example that the fuzzy logic of some
| prior AI craze ended up in certain rice cookers, while
| ignoring that the remaining
| 99.8881118881118883479075520881451666355133056640625 (or so)
| percent of AI is some combination of grift, wishful thinking,
| or both.
| andrew_lettuce wrote:
| Way to move the goalposts. The argument is not about the
| usefulness, it's about baked-in on by default features for
| what are obvious extension workflows. About the only
| marketing advantage FF has at this point is customizable and
| lack of dirty tricks. Mozilla seems confusingly desperate to
| sell out here asap
| dzikimarian wrote:
| Why this is obvious extension workflow and vertical tabs or
| FF Sync aren't?
|
| How do you propose they finance development if we consider
| simple integrations with zero privacy or customization
| impact "selling out"?
| BrenBarn wrote:
| Those are also obvious extension workflow.
|
| They would need to finance a lot less development if they
| stopped changing things and just worked on maintaining a
| limited core functionality including a nice extension
| system. That's it. Most of their "development" over the
| last 10 years has been a total waste of time.
| dzikimarian wrote:
| You really think these things are requiring significant
| development budget, compared to keeping up with things
| like wasm, webgpu, grid/flex layouts?
|
| Can you really say with a straight face, that not doing
| vertical tabs or chat shortcut would allow them to
| operate on much smaller budget?
| yreg wrote:
| It should be opt-in to avoid alienating users.
|
| That being said, I'm a FF user interested in exploring what LLM
| features in webbrowsers could bring. I would hate it if lack of
| them would make me switch to chromium-based browsers. So I'm
| happy Mozilla is exploring these.
| Ukv wrote:
| > Certainly not the Linux / open-source crowd
|
| At least the local AI features, being able to translate or
| summarize a page without sending it off to Google, seem like
| they'd appeal to this crowd the most.
|
| I don't really understand the article's complaints (like "high
| cpu & ram usage with firefox local ai features" and "forcing
| [...] without asking the user") when to my understanding
| they're something you have to intentionally decide to use and
| are not using any resources otherwise - unless there's some
| feature I've missed.
| HappyPanacea wrote:
| > At least the local AI features, being able to translate or
| summarize a page without sending it off to Google, seem like
| they'd appeal to this crowd the most.
|
| Yes I would like more local translation support! (Faster,
| better, more languages, sometimes it fails on mobile for
| unknown reasons). Also Firefox history could use refresh
| (like suggested here
| https://community.brave.app/t/improvements-for-browser-
| histo... and 5 can be AI enhanced)
| jchw wrote:
| Local translation, sure. Summarization? No... For one thing,
| I don't use _anything_ for that (does Google have a
| "Summarize This" feature now?) But unless I missed it, I
| don't even think this article disables the local translation
| feature. I'm pretty sure that is controlled by
| `browser.translations.enable`.
| 0manrho wrote:
| Any AI features, helpful or no, seems to me like something
| that should exist in the form of an extension, not baked into
| the browser. Or, if baked in, should be opt in, not opt out
| by default, as regardless of where you fall on it, AI is a
| divisive topic and people have strong opinions on it.
| Especially the people in Firefoxes remaining small audience
| that tend to be more technically literate and
| privacy/security conscious.
|
| I have no problem with it announcing new features and asking
| if I wish to enable them after an update, but I'd really
| rather prefer it not to force enable new features (regardless
| of proximity/relevance to AI) whether it tells me about them
| up front - and especially don't want it to if they aren't
| even notifying me of it.
| rc_kas wrote:
| Yeah. As a Mozilla/FF user for as long as I have memory ...
| unwanted "features" are about the only way to get me stop using
| this browser.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >Certainly not the Linux / open-source crowd
|
| Appealing to that crowd is not big enough to grow it's market
| share from 2%.
| do_not_redeem wrote:
| Appealing to that crowd is how they grew their market share
| the first time around. The techies came first, trust was
| established, and then they recommended it to everyone else.
|
| Do you really think AI features are going to move the needle
| here? Is your grandma going to think "Wow, Firefox can
| summarize my emails!" and switch web browsers?
| fabrice_d wrote:
| Most of Firefox user base has always been on Windows, not
| Linux. What OS do you think the "techies" that promoted
| Firefox to replace IE in the first place were running?
| do_not_redeem wrote:
| Sure maybe 20 years ago. But back then Linux's userbase
| was also on Windows, because desktop Linux hadn't really
| become usable yet. I think nowadays Firefox's marketshare
| is a lot higher on e.g. Ubuntu (where it's the default)
| than it is on Windows (where Edge is the default).
| charcircuit wrote:
| Optimal marketing strategies change over time. What may
| have worked 20 years, may not be the right approach today.
| Many businesses struggle with this. They remember what they
| did to initial gain success, but that marketing route is no
| longer effective so they fail to figure out how to reach
| new people and eventually die.
|
| >Do you really think AI features are going to move the
| needle here?
|
| It's better than doing nothing at least.
| scuff3d wrote:
| I switched to Vivaldi because I was fed up with Firefox.
|
| I'm not thrilled it isn't open source. But it works, it has the
| best out of the box experience I've seen in any browser, and
| they don't shove AI features in my face.
| lemoncookiechip wrote:
| They're all easily disabled in the GUI itself. The article is
| exaggerating, the closest argument is that it enables itself by
| default when it first updated which is fair, but they're easy to
| disable within the menu itself.
| skydhash wrote:
| Anything enabled by default without prompting in an update is
| usually against the user.
| skywhopper wrote:
| How? about:config doesn't count as "the GUI", imo.
| Animats wrote:
| Where? I just looked in Settings.
| input_sh wrote:
| Right click on the icon - remove.
|
| The same goes for right clicking on the page - ask AI -
| remove.
| MrAlex94 wrote:
| I understand why Mozilla have started implementing these
| features, it seems to have more mass market appeal than not -
| look at how popular "AI" powered browsers have become.
|
| 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.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| So true about onboarding. The trend towards trying to make all
| interfaces simple and immediately accessible has led to lots of
| functionality being deeply hidden. Of course you don't want the
| interface to be insanely complicated but you also don't want to
| make it so simple it's limiting.
|
| Sort of related, after reading this I went and checked the
| Waterfox reddit and saw some people complaining about recent
| changes. I agree with a person there that one of the most
| important things is not changing. One of the reasons I use
| Waterfox is to not be subject to the caprices of Mozilla. I
| just want the same interface I've been using since back in the
| days of like Firefox 4.0. If there are changes, they can be
| introduced in an opt-in, reversible way as you suggest. But the
| default assumption should be "don't break users' workflows by
| changing behavior".
|
| I appreciate all you do with Waterfox! I've been using it for
| years now.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > Related: I feel like onboarding is a lost art, more software
| should bring back software wizards and UI tours.
|
| Yes, please! We use Google's online office programs at work and
| every time it has so far popped up a notification about a new
| feature I immediately dismissed it by the act of actually doing
| the work I opened the tab to do. Then I have no idea how to
| find out what that feature was again, as the popup notification
| was dismissed.
| knollimar wrote:
| Seriously. I'm the type of person to read the what's new, but
| they're temporally placed for minimal engagement with them
| dehrmann wrote:
| I'm torn because I probably do want to know what new,
| relevant features are, but I opened the app for a reason, so
| I want the tour to get out of my way so I can do my work.
| themafia wrote:
| > look at how popular "AI" powered browsers have become.
|
| Is there an active user market for browsers? If there isn't
| then this analysis is useless.
| scuff3d wrote:
| > ...look at how popular "AI" powered browsers have become.
|
| What? I have yet to meet a single person who has any interest
| in "AI powered browsers"
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| That's disappointing. If they can do EME-free builds, they can do
| LLM-free builds. This isn't a 'tricky issue'
|
| https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/reconciling-mozillas-missi...
| superkuh wrote:
| The built in LLM translation is great. I'm leaving that enabled.
| It's useful and it's a perfect application for local LLM to be
| better than the equivalent corporate services.
|
| 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.
| reyqn wrote:
| The built-in translation is not LLM, it's NMT
| asciimov wrote:
| What is your favorite Firefox alternative?
| brazukadev wrote:
| Floorp is good so far switched without regrets
| aprilnya wrote:
| Zen revolutionized my workflow!
| nativeit wrote:
| Good coffee and/or long walks.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I've been using Vivaldi alongside Firefox anyways for the edge
| cases where non-chromium browsers refused to work but I've
| switched fully now because of the latest round of AI crap. At
| least Vivaldi has explicitly committed themselves to keep it
| out of the browser.
|
| https://vivaldi.com/blog/keep-exploring/
| briga wrote:
| There's a checkbox on whether you want to use it or not in the
| settings page, does this not change these settings?
|
| 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?
| johnh-hn wrote:
| If the checkbox you're referring to is the "Use AI to suggest
| tabs and a name for tab groups" one, then I can't see what
| setting it changes. It's not the browser.ml.enable flag. I
| tried unchecking it, restarting the browser, and that flag was
| unaffected. This is in version 144.0.2.
|
| Searching for "AI" shows one other setting: "Quickly access
| bookmarks, tabs from your phone, AI chatbots, and more without
| leaving your main view." But I'd already disabled that
| apparently. Despite that, there are plenty of flags that were
| enabled mentioned in the article.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Last I checked there wasn't and you still had to fiddle with a
| few about:config options to actually turn off all the ai stuff.
| I would be fine with it if it was just a settings page rather
| than hidden settings.
| web3-is-a-scam wrote:
| They're opt-out and can be disabled in the settings or fully
| disabled in about:config. Definitely annoying but not enough to
| make me switch to a Chromium based browser.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > They're opt-out and can be disabled in the settings or fully
| disabled in about:config.
|
| Any setting where there's a difference between "disabled" and
| "fully disabled" is user hostile. And, for a company that
| advertises itself as all about respecting the user, Mozilla
| sure does love their user-hostile decisions.
| Lerc wrote:
| This should not be considered an LLM issue. It's a user
| experience issue.
|
| 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?
| themafia wrote:
| > This should not be considered an LLM issue.
|
| LLMs are garbage and they add nothing to the browsing
| experience.
|
| > Are there any reports actually showing degradation because of
| LLMs rather than post hoc ergo propter hoc?
|
| You can control this option with a setting. It seems like it
| would be really really easy to just test this. As a result I
| can't see any reason to doubt this by default or apply a
| legalistic evidentiary standard when considering it.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| .
| reyqn wrote:
| And is also not using an LLM. It's neural machine
| translation.
| skybrian wrote:
| It's easy to test, therefore there is no need to test it? I
| don't see how that follows. If you haven't tested it then you
| haven't tested it.
| dathinab wrote:
| > Are there any reports actually showing degradation because of
| LLMs rather than post hoc ergo propter hoc?
|
| AFIK no
|
| nearly all AI features only do any compute if you explicitly
| ask them to do stuff
|
| the only exception is that when you create a tab group (and
| only then!) it will auto recommend a name. And while I don't
| find a very useful for me (and I use tab groups a ton) I also
| have observed that non technical users get confused with
| unnamed tab groups and the UI around them so I really
| understand why they do that. Also while it's "technically" a
| LLM it's tiny and fast to run and could also have been
| implemented with just embeddings at a slightly loss of quality
| (and again only runs if you create a tab group and not at any
| other time and not if you computer has less then 3GiB of RAM
| etc. etc.(yes FF disables AI features on very low RAM devices
| AFIK))
|
| Put people hear AI think LLM get angry and stop thinking.
|
| Or considering that maybe a non negligible amount of people
| outside of their bubble want exactly that and might leave your
| browser if you don't supply that.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| As long as it's local I think it's okay.
|
| 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.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| Is it local though?
|
| I'm so confused, they have a whole page that starts with how
| they run everything on device[0]. But the page ends telling you
| how great it is that you can choose your AI service which then
| leads to a page where ... all the options are hosted AI
| providers and half the page is about you have to read their
| terms of service and they all invade your privacy[1]. I
| stupidly enabled Gemini at some point and now there's no
| obvious way in the UI to disable it. I can only switch to a
| different hosted service provider.
|
| I searched in settings for AI, model, LLM, nada.
|
| Whatever good things they did here they totally screwed up the
| comms and UI execution of it.
|
| [0] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/firefox-ai/ai-browser-
| fe...
|
| [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ai-chatbot
| f33d5173 wrote:
| >I would think most non technical users would just use a
| different browser.
|
| I would think most users would ignore the features they don't
| like? Idgi
| nerevarthelame wrote:
| Honestly, I haven't even noticed LLM features in the desktop
| version. But I found it really annoying in the mobile (iOS) app.
| There's a "Summarize Page" feature that's adjacent to "Find in
| Page." It's easy to mis-tap when you're just trying to search for
| a term on the page. It's also activated by the shake gesture,
| which can happen accidentally.
|
| Three dots -> Settings -> Page Summaries to disable that.
| eahm wrote:
| Sharing my configs, hopefully they'll be helpful to someone. I
| don't even use Firefox but I keep the settings updated (prefs.js
| can be modified by Mozilla/Firefox, user.js does not change).
|
| NOTE: Some settings might block too much, edit and use as you
| please.
|
| https://rentry.co/browserconfigs /
| https://rentry.org/browserconfigs
| catach wrote:
| I've found the "Copy text from image" menu command to be useful
| from time to time, and the features I'm not interested in seemed
| easy to turn off/dismiss/ignore?
| zkmon wrote:
| Wondering how these chatbot links in the sidebar are any
| different from bookmarks.
| threeducks wrote:
| I think that (optional) AI features are fine, but the model
| selection only shows the big providers by default. You can enable
| local LLM support under about:config ->
| browser.ml.chat.hideLocalhost (set to false). It will check
| localhost:8080, which is not a great choice for a fixed port. I'd
| prefer if I could just point it at any OpenAI-compatible
| endpoint. Either way, seems to work well when serving a local
| model with llama.cpp.
| delduca wrote:
| Firefox for Windows now have a button "Talk to OpenAI"
| qwertox wrote:
| What is this all about? Where would I find any of these LLM
| features? What do they even do?
|
| 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...
| bitsig wrote:
| For people using NixOS, you can wrap these configs in extraPrefs
| in wrapFirefox firefox-unwrapped:
|
| 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); ''
| ); })
| ekr____ wrote:
| I know I'm a broken record on this topic, but messing with
| prefs directly is not a supported way of configuring Firefox,
| so if you do this, you shouldn't complain that Mozilla changed
| the prefs and reenabled these features.
|
| It's of course totally fine to be annoyed if Firefox doesn't
| have a supported preference to disable them (though from the
| discussion below it sounds like they do) or if you set that
| preference and then they change it.
| themafia wrote:
| > is not a supported way of configuring Firefox
|
| What is the supported way?
|
| > you shouldn't complain that Mozilla changed the prefs and
| reenabled these features.
|
| Then they should provide a reliable way of getting what I
| want. This notion that software developers know better than
| me is poisonous.
| ekr____ wrote:
| > What is the supported way?
|
| The settings UI.
|
| > > you shouldn't complain that Mozilla changed the prefs
| and reenabled these features.
|
| > Then they should provide a reliable way of getting what I
| want.
|
| As I said in the comment you are responding to, it's
| perfectly legitimate to complain if Mozilla didn't provide
| a setting to disable these features (though it seems they
| have done so in at least some cases). However, if they
| don't do so, and you decide to disable them in some
| unsupported way, you shouldn't be surprised that you get
| unexpected results.
|
| > This notion that software developers know better than me
| is poisonous.
|
| I don't think this is really a reasonable proposition as a
| general matter. A browser is a very complicated piece of
| software and each individual configuration point is
| additional development and testing burden, both separately,
| and in combination with other configuration points.
| Developers need to make all kinds of decisions in order to
| manage engineering complexity. In some cases, where
| developers know that people will want to configure things,
| they'll provide configuration options but it's not
| practical to do so for every feature, and inevitably in
| some cases they'll get it wrong (see "legitimate to
| complain" above).
| KetoManx64 wrote:
| How is it an unsupported way of configuring Firefox when they
| literaly code the browser to accept and parse the config file
| and set the settings?
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's important to remember that if people think of Firefox as a
| way to escape LLMs being pushed on them in Chrome, they might
| accidentally attract users from Chrome. It's the only possible
| reason why this wouldn't be a plugin. Why else would a user-
| focused browser consciously come up with strategies that attack
| user preferences?
|
| 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.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Mozilla seems to be an organization that is metrics driven to a
| degree that would make Robert MacNamarra blush.
|
| 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.
| evolving-silica wrote:
| I'm not sure if I ever used any LLM features from Firefox besides
| exploring, but so far it seems great they're trying local
| approach instead of sending it to some "partner".
|
| 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
| metalman wrote:
| deleated from most recent linux install on a new to me desktop.
| vile I just want to work(create stuff), there is nothing that any
| "service" can do for me. the relentles attempts to get in the way
| of sending and recieving information is mindbogling, and I am
| going to be getting an analog telephone adapter, so that I can
| start useing fax, over cellular data, and making paper plans
| ,taking pictures, and converting to pdf's to avoid the wasted
| time and cost of software solutions the surreal part is that the
| LLM's have found me, and are recomending me to people looking for
| custom metal, so much for a low profile there, and somehow my
| number got out on indeed, and I got a wave of people calling,
| applying for "the job" but bitterly complaining that the app they
| downloaded as part of that, wasn't working right. fine, ok,
| whatever.
|
| but not on my machine
| dathinab wrote:
| sure the smart tab group features are kind useless (but tab
| groups are grate)
|
| 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.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| It's boggling my mind that FireFox is 2% of the browser market
| now. I'm hoping that includes mobile where it makes a lot more
| sense. But even so, really sad. It is actually a great browser
| (putting aside this issue of AI features being pushed) and I
| actually do have much greater trust that it is respecting my
| privacy over Chrome and Edge.
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