Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

The page seems to be a copy from the original Mozilla press release from February 2nd: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/

It was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46858492

I love how AI's most-requested feature is always a way to completely disable it in products.

Where are the AI features in Firefox? Looking around right now the only one I see is right click tab -> Summarize page (NEW). I googled a bit and see they have some grouping of tabs feature I've never used/seen (or want). The only other maybe AI feature I remember seeing is the odd left hand bar that is there on fresh installs and I usually remove to declutter.

Are those the features this kill switch removes or was there a deeper issue here?

Ironically, I bet that a significant majority of the users that turn on the AI kill switch — which must have some kind of phone-home telematics attached — will also be users who have disabled Firefox metrics collection and so will not have their opinion counted.

So, the most effective path here for y’all to be heard is not flipping the switch off yourself (do so anyways!) — anyone who cares at this stage has probably opted out of being counted already, after all — but instead to ensure that news of this switch spreads to absolutely as many non-tech people as possible. Don’t argue that they should run some script that shuts off their metrics and phone home and updates. Just convince them to shut off the AI and explain that this is why their browser got slow about a year ago! They’ll flip off the switch gleefully, their phone-home will count them, and y’all will have the strongest possible impact on the telematics graphs at Mozilla.

I already ran the disable process manually on the computers I have friends and family IT duties towards, so I’ll go back and do the AI switch to be sure it’s counted next week. Yes, this is a crap way to be heard. But making a mark on feature opt-out graphs is probably the only hope we have left to get their executive leadership to stop drowning the browser for its own good.

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

This just blocks AI features within Firefox.

The feature I would really want here is a switch that blocks AI summaries, overviews, etc. on any websites you browse.

Good. I was fearing Firefox would also end up having too many AI-Features i do not want. But switching to Chromium-Browsers isnt an option anyways because of their Manifest V3 extension model. Restricting blockers? Whats next?

I don't know...at one point I got off Firefox because it was slow and I was never able to get back to it ever again. Maybe I should try now?

This is great news. I recently updated AMD Adrenalin, and the "minimal" version doesn't let you change the distribution of unified RAM on Strix Halo. I installed the "full" version, and it wanted me to install a 10GB "local AI assistant" to "help" me configure it. When I opened the program, it showed me a non-dismissable fake chat that occupied 25% of the screen, prompting me to click it and replace it with a real one.

I remember when every other software prompted you to install Bonzi Buddy or some other intrusive search bar. This AI push is even worse.

Great, let's see how it works out.

Firefox for Android has been killing it for me with the latest ux updates, I didn't expect major improvements there and was pleasantly surprised.

I don't mind the AI features per se, but is there a configuration setting to sent the traffic through a local AI Gateway to prevent the AI from receiving private information? At the very least to track what is sent over the wire.

Maybe it's just me but why is it on by default? Why is this shit not off in the first place? Why can't Firefox just be a browser with great html, css, js rendering and then have a bunch of toggles for extra crap that people want? Do they actually have metrics that show "When we enable this crap by default we make an extra $X Million per year"? I'd put money on that being untrue. I bet it's like the data-driven ad spend - I've yet to see anything that proves that hoovering up bajillions of data points on each person moves the needle on spending beyond just showing a context-relevant ad, e.g. An ad for fishing gear on a blog post about fishing gear!

Honestly, I feel more and more every day like old-man-shaking-fist-at-clouds! Can we not just have something that works without spying, without engagement-driven shit switched on all the fucking time?

I think of the Simpsons Mr Brown meme where he's asking "Is it me that's wrong?".

I can't be the only person that thinks this way!

last time when I updated Firefox, the package manager began building ONNX Runtime from source, which my "minuscule" 16GB of RAM couldn't handle. I want that during install time, as I don't like the idea of rebuilding ONNX every time Firefox updates, period.

In case you're looking for the opposite, not an AI "kill switch", but a propaganda kill switch using AI to fight disinformatiom, try BiasScanner:

BiasScanner - Firefox Plug-In https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/bias-scanner/

Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.10829

Step 1: Launch AI features Step 2: Launch AI features kill switch Step 3: ???? Step 4: Profit?

Firefox does what some people want, people complain. Firefox does what other people want, people complain. Firefox does what both people want, people complain.

I'm sorry, but we'll never get corporations to do what we want if we don't throw them the smallest bone when we get our way. You need positive reinforcement too, not just negative. If it's all negative they just stop caring and you get companies lot Google who just don't give a shit anymore.

And yes, there are some AI features I like and I want in the browser. I get a lot of utility out of translation as well as semantic search of my history. I don't want agents in my browser but get, Firefox is giving us choices.

Look, no one needs to like Firefox, but let's also be honest, it's the best we got right now. Google, Apple, and Microsoft are shoving agents down our throats and putting us in walled gardens that are getting harder and harder to break from. I don't care what flavor of chromium you use, Google is still using it to control the way the web works. Everyone loves to say how chromium is has greater coverage of standards but never takes a second to question who sets those standards.

I'm sorry guys, that's the state of things now. You can't fight Google by switching to chromium. It's still their vehicle to eat the internet. Our choices right now are Safari, Firefox, and maybe ladybird. It's slim pickings and nothing is close to perfect. At this point it doesn't even matter if Mozilla is evil, because at least they're the enemy of our enemy. Google is keeping them on life support to avoid monopoly claims but how long will they need that?

So what, we're just going to hand the keys of the kingdom to the guys selling artisian turd sandwiches because what, there isn't enough mayo on your ham sandwich? Because you don't like ham?

We got a win. Celebrate. Take the break from being cynical. There's bigger battles to fight and there'll be more tomorrow. Take the night off and don't be a sore winner

the kill switch framing is interesting because it treats AI features as a coherent unit you'd want to disable together. in practice most AI features in browsers are pretty granular -- autocomplete, summarize page, translate. the users who want to disable AI usually mean 'stop sending my browsing data to a model endpoint,' not 'disable the local spell checker.' a per-feature data-flow disclosure might be more useful than a binary kill switch.

Did they also fire the CEO who wanted to make Firefox into AI browser?

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I wish there were some updates about PWA support. Haven’t heard about progress on this since last August. Is it still in beta and only available on Windows?

Will it render &em; as &en; ?

I'm torn on whether to see this "AI Kill switch" as a win on respecting the users, or something to keep us distractewd while they ship through "Trusted Types" API that sounds like further restriction of end-user computing freedoms.

Is there disable auto-update setting in GUI? Last time i looked there was none and i had to create some settings.json file for that.

That's why I use Helium now.

Wake me when they add webserial.

Welcome to 2026, where the biggest feature is the ability to turn off the AI they forced onto you.

Now I need a switch for my smartphone and my computer too.

If I wanted a browser with AI, I would have used Chrome or Edge

Why wasn't this there from the get go? Many people dislike the AI spam; I do too. I use chrome-based browsers usually (I also hate how dependent I have become on Google; default firefox refuses to play audio on my linux system as they claim we need pulseaudio, chrome instead makes no such assumption and audio plays just fine, so one can go and figure out why mozilla acts worse than Google here - all the google-bribe money killed its THINKING ability), so when I do, I use a few extensions such as "disable AI overview" or similar. It is annoying that we have to invest time in order to uncripple the world wide web. Browser vendors should be much more responsible, from the get go. But they all want to jump on the hype train, to milk out more money. Greed is the driving theme nowadays. (They could offer AI based on people who want or need that, rather than cram it down onto everyone.)

Another opt out anti feature. Luckily better forks like Mullvad Browser and LibreWolf exist that actually deliver what Firefox promises.

Firefox is the only holdout against the ad companies, and I'm counting Microsoft amongst those. It's a very good browser, independent with its own renderer, with decent ad blocking and decent performance.

It continually amazes me how people use a Google product on their desktop, as if they don't send enough data to an ad company. Actually, I'm not sure why I type this, any rational arguments are definitely not winning them over.

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