See title.

How do you actually disable this new AI bullshit? I can't find anyhting in the settings

Ask the AI :-D

Settings\Tabs

"Use AI to suggest tabs and a name for tab groups" tickbox.

I don't have that option, I assume because of the progressive rollout, but "browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled" and "browser.tabs.groups.smart.optin" are still present in about:config. So if you don't have the option in Settings, you can disable it in about:config.

I just disabled the grouping feature entirely with "browser.tabs.groups.enabled".

Thank-you zimzam, with your last suggesteion I can get rid of the annoying tab group crap that I accidentally activate at least 3 times per day while rearranging tabs.

My blood pressure thanks you too. ;)

Install LibreWolf.

Job jobbed.

Will not support my extensions.

Jobby dropped.

Find better extensions.

Job jobbed from dropped jobby.

They are crap because I wrote them. I haven't got time to fix them for mickey-mouse browser #273

wolfetone - Install LibreWolf.

Wel, you would say that, wouldn't you?

"With apologies to MRD"

Worth it.

> Install LibreWolf.

Doesn't work with a global menu bar in Linux. (I tested on Unity and Xfce.)

So, I still recommend Waterfox, which does that fine and has much the same privacy tweaks, plus built-in vertical tabs.

I keep meaning to try Waterfox whenever I see it mentioned, and then I'm unfortunately reminded it's not in Debian's main repo (yet?).

Maybe an(other) excuse to put together a FreeBSD laptop, even though there are a few missing features in the pkg there.

Install Seamonkey.

"The announcement says that this is on-device, so at least it won't spin up a rackful of servers in a datacenter somewhere to full speed just for this."

Oh cool. so now Mozilla foundation and crypto miners get to 'borrow' my battery life too? I love the future where this is what the 'good' guys are doing.

The inference power is run on your dime, but all that delicious user profiling that continually extends its fingers into your browsing habits and preferences will dutifully box your data up and ship it off to the highest warehouse & collection bidder. Why do we even bother with HTTPS if every web request is ultimately going to be screen-read and safari-photographed six times over by every on-device AI agent whose handler wants a piece of your consumer pie?

...is there no web address block list that can be customised to pull a set of addresses from somewhere that block interaction with all known AI data snaffling servers.

Better, all raw data from AI snaffling could be corrupted and automatically rerouted to random Microsoft e-mail addresses as lengthy e-mails of gibberish with workplace-friendly subjects.

Expressing our displeasure to Microsoft and others really does need to be automated in such a way that when they do something unpleasant to us all, the result is an automated tsunami of crap landing at their door. And given the number of users they have, it really would be an absolute mountain of e-poop.

It would seem that UBO/Pihole, or similar, armed with a nice block list should help - I couldn't find anything specifically to block the slurp since a lot of that is already blocked by tracker lists and the like.

It's not what you're after, but I did find this which will block gen AI sites, which is handy if you're trying to improve search results:

https://github.com/laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist/blob/main/noai_hosts.txt

If you blend both kinds of host lists, you should be able to get by without too much AI bothering you.

Why would even I want something moving my tabs around and renaming them, on device or off it? The whole point of grouped tabs is they go where I want them to go and then I go back to them later by finding them in the same place I left them.

What next? Tomorrow we mix up your tool bar and menus... with AI.

Is it not just naming your tab group? AFAIK it doesn't move anything around. (Not that I'll keep anything AI-enabled as it sickens me)

From the [1]release notes :

A local AI model identifies similar tabs, automatically organizes them into groups, and even suggests group names.

[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/141.0/releasenotes/

Churn for the sake of churn -- who needs it? The safest and most productive tool is in general the one you're most familiar with. OK, so given current dev methodologies (AKA sloppy coding practices) we may need regular bug fixes, but new "features" every month? WTF.

Should have been a browser extension, IMO.

Last thing Firefox needs is more bloat. The core experience should be lean, and any unnecessary functionality should be an extension.

This is why I wish the Mozilla foundation would run out of money...

I have automatic updates for Firefox disabled - I will update when I need to - not because some idiot wants to muck around with the layout again.

I left Ubuntu for Mint just because of this. Too much trouble getting rid of Snap, getting rid of forced update Firefox and Thunderbird and reverting to old versions that I was happy with - especially Thunderbird, back to v68.

Mint does unasked upgrades to Firefox if you install it from the Mint repositories. At least it isn't snap.

To their credit, they do offer an ESR which gets security and stability updates only. Other browsers don't even tell if they've been updated: Chrome, Microsoft's Shit Browser, etc.

You mean: no security updates on your Firefox??

I was slightly surprised to find that the new version doesn't start at all on my machine. Looks like an oversight which should be fixed in the next release, but still...

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1978620

Yeah, that caught me too this morning. Had to roll back to a previous version and have disabled automatic updating. Pain in the arse tbh.

"Don't update if your system is wayland-free"

Worked perfectly fine here on a wayland an systemd garbage free Devuan Excalibur system. But then again it is like the energizer bunny for me it just keeps going and going no matter the problems I see others complaining about. I never seen them in going on three decades of use since the Netscape fork. I should buy lottery ticket I must have incredible luck, either that or only having tiny handful of extensions and only dozen or so tabs instead of the hundreds open keeps it stable day after day year after year....

You might not be using Wayland directly but your system must have GTK+ built with Wayland support.

Are you speaking of V141.0? The only version of 141.1.0 I can find is for Windows only. (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/140.1.0/system-requirements/)

When does it start doing that? Mine's always just popped a notification saying it would need to be closed before it could update, never implied I 'had' to do it or stopped me working. I tend to turn my machines off at the end of the day rather than standby, so maybe it's just I've never left it long enough for it elevate it's nag level?

I think it's due to your Windows BOFH or your Linux repo pushing updates and Firefox detecting that. It was extremely annoying though (if that 'feature' is truly gone now).

Ah - I probably still have most of mine via snaps. Maybe it didn't nag with those (it's snapd that nags me, never FF).

I only leave them that way so people have something to judge me on ;)

"On Windows 11, Firefox will now pick up the OS's font settings for some controls."

How about Linux versions picking the OS's theme settings for icons?

> How about Linux versions picking the OS's theme settings for icons?

It can't, because the OS is Linux and Linux has no concept of themes or icons. It's a 100% text-mode OS.

That kind of stuff is down to the desktop, and that's a target way too diffuse to aim for.

Firefox uses Gtk, I believe version 3.4 or above, and that might be doable -- but it would only cover MATE and Xfce. I think nothing else much uses Gtk 3 any more. LXDE never moved off Gtk 2, and as a result LXQt uses Qt, the same as KDE. Cinnamon, Budgie and GNOME are on Gtk 4.

Don't blame this on Linux! This is a matter of the limitations imposed by Gnome's UI, which makes it extremely difficult to adjust things like font face, icon size and many other "user" preferences, as well as Firefox's opaque about:config settings, which ignore some of the Gnome settings, and whose documentation seems to be a Mozilla secret.

I don't like throwing in AI features without a care either but...

* Language translation works well and now does it locally. Pick your poison, use AI or send it to Google Translate which is what they did before. I prefer local translation.

*Alt text description of images. If someone didn't follow those web accessibility requirements and provide alt text this should be genuinely useful for visually impaired users. Run locally.

* 'AI enhanced tab groups' sound diumb.

* AI summary of a web link. i don't trust this to work right but you have to hit some combo of keys to run it anyway.

* Put a chat bot in a sidebar. This runs remotely. Dumb but iit's not there unless you turn it on and there are those who LOVE their chat bots.

In other words, no fan of just throwing AI in but I do think seveal of these features are genuinely useful and they run locally so they are privacy respecting, and none are 'in your face.'

I use 1 a lot, have disabled 3 and 5, and I think 4 is an experiment and I'm not included in it.

I didn't even know 2 existed, and I'm not sure how it's evolved since the initial announcement of it working just for PDFs, or what about:config toggle is required to enable/disable it. If Mozilla were on the ball they would include a settings page with a toggle switch for each AI feature and another switch for 'shut it all off' for those who don't want anything, but they rarely are these days.

Agree. I use the translate function a lot, as I often end somewhere, where I cannot find the 英語 button.

*One* AI function I would pay for, is the ability to blur images of Trump&Co, so I do not have my eeww-reflex triggered every few news articles.

"Yes, an LLM bot will kick in and try to suggest an appropriate name for groups of tabs."

It's not really AI though is it? Especially if it's running locally like that with no specific hardware support required. It's no different to the iOS ability to suggest a name for a folder when you group a bunch of apps together, which has been done since long before LLM was a buzzword.

But hey, they need to be seen to be jumping on the bandwagon don't they? Microsoft will be retrospectively calling Clippy an AI/LLM tool soon.

It is literally an LLM. It is literally AI.

There is more to this as well.

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/04/firefox-nightly-introduces-experimental-link-previews-with-ai-summary

There is an old saying (from the last AI hype cycle in the 80s? or the previous one in the early 70s?). I cannot cite the author anymore because the internet is now AI swill.

"If it is useful, it isn't AI".

Grouping and naming tabs is not useful. Therefore, it could be AI?

> It's not really AI though is it?

None of it is "AI". That's why I put it in quotes.

They are language models: tiny statistical models, run using tensor arithmetic, and a small one can run locally on your phone or laptop, sure, no problem.

Fair, I didn't even see the quotes bit. I pretty much also object to the phrase "LLM", as by the stretchiest of definitions, your local spell checker in Word for Windows 2.0 would probably count as AI in that case.

Dumping fakespot as it was useful for users for AI that most people hate is certainly a move. It's like a lesson in how to piss off your customers.

At this point I'm not sure if mozilla has a humiliation or fad jumping kink.