Over the past year, Firefox has been receiving flak for not focusing on the core web browsing experience and pivoting hard towards AI instead, even after leadership changes.
While some of these new features can be useful, not everyone wants AI features in their web browser. Some people just want the traditional browsing experience.
It looks like Mozilla finally understood that.
What to Expect?
Firefox is getting a new config page called "AI Controls" that is set to become the home for all the AI features in the browser. When live, it will be found in the browser settings, accessible via the hamburger button on the top-right or via the following address about:preferences.
As for what it can do for you, well, if you don't want any AI features at all, then you can toggle the option called "Block AI Enhancements" to switch off every AI feature in Firefox (this is not enabled by default btw).
For more granular control, you can go in and toggle each AI feature on its own. Translations, alt text for images in PDFs, and AI tab grouping all have their own switches, so you can choose what stays and what goes.
Link previews are in there too; these show you a quick summary of a page before you open it. I had tested an experimental version of it last year (linked above), and it had some rough edges back then. But I assume that things are better now.
And if you use the AI chatbot in the sidebar, you get to configure which one you want, these range from Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot to Gemini and Le Chat Mistral.
After these are configured, Firefox will remember your choices across app upgrades. If you want a sneak peek, then you will want to keep an eye out on the Firefox Nightly build; it will be introducing AI Controls very soon.
For the rest of us, Firefox 148 is arriving on February 24 as the first stable release with these controls.
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Sourav Rudra
