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Here at Mozilla, we are the first to admit the internet isn’t perfect, but we know the internet is pretty darn magical. The internet opens up doors and opportunities, allows for human connection, and lets everyone find where they belong — their corners of the internet. We all have an internet story worth sharing. In My Corner Of The Internet, we talk with people about the online spaces they can’t get enough of, the sites and forums that shaped them, and how they would design their own corner of the web.

We caught up with Javier Cabral, the editor-in-chief of L.A. Taco, a culture site covering life (and tacos) in Los Angeles. He talks about starting out as a teenage food blogger, going deep on espresso Reddit, and being fully prepared to defend his take that carnitas should never be topped with salsa.

What was the first online community you engaged with?

Back in 2007 — before Instagram, Yelp, when the first cameras on phones were just starting to come out — I started a food blog called Teenage Glutster. I was 16. And my first community was people who commented on my writing. It was not vitriolic… it was very supportive. Things are different now, but over the years, I figured out how to respond or not respond to trolls, to message boards, to random comments online. Back then I would just walk by restaurants, grab menus, study them and write about them. And yes, the blog is still up.

What is your favorite corner of the internet?

Well, you have to realize that when you ask the editor of an independent online publication, the internet starts to become all work and errands. It gets harder and harder to use it for fun.

So my favorite corner is wherever I can decompress. After publishing stressful stories— obituaries, stuff that could get us sued — I just want to chill. That’s when I’m scrolling Reddit. Lately, I’ve been on the Marzocco subreddit. My wife just got me a Marzocco espresso machine. It’s this very professional, expensive, stupid-high-quality machine that requires finesse. If you use the wrong tamp, you void the warranty. But there’s an art to it, like pulling a perfect shot of espresso. That subreddit has been my go-to for about six months. It’s just cool to have the internet be a place that isn’t dread or trolling or deadlines.

It’s getting so hard to have good, clean thrills in our lives. You know, in a world where everything feels like slow self-destruction, this hobby feels wholesome. The machine is expensive, and it just went up in price because of tariffs, but I’ve already pulled hundreds of shots. I know folks who love the ritual of walking to their local shop. I respect that. But you can also develop that same ritual at home and build a real passion around it.

So yeah, that’s my current little corner of the internet.

What is an internet deep dive that you can’t wait to jump back into?

I oversee a publication, so I’m always watching to see what performs. But it gets harder to predict what’ll take off. The news cycle moves fast, especially with things like Trump, AI, doomscrolling.

I’m especially interested in why people are willing to pay our membership rate — it’s like $6/month — to find out things like the top 25 breakfast burritos in L.A. That’s part of what I want to keep doing deep dives into — readership insights and what those patterns actually mean right now.

Also, the relationship between creators and journalists. I’m sensing a real divide. But creators need what journalists need: engagement, attention, readers. Where can we meet in peace? I want to keep researching that.

I went to community college for journalism, and things were already changing fast then. I can only imagine what it’s like for students now. But they still want to write and create with ethics and integrity. That’s the future of journalism.

What is the one tab you always regret closing?

I always say to myself, “Okay, I’m going to shut my computer at 5 p.m. and be a normal human.” But it rarely happens. There’s always another story, another case, something I have to get done. So I always regret closing my browser in general. Even after you finish a story and send it off to socials, there’s usually something you forgot.

What can you not stop talking about on the internet right now?

Tacos. I was just on The Dave Chang Show, and I’m getting a lot of heat for what I said. I said carnitas aren’t meant to be eaten with salsa. You’re supposed to eat them with jalapeño in vinegar. That sparked a lot of reactions. But I stand by everything I publish. I’m always prepared to defend it in a dark alley, if needed.

Today they published another clip where I was actually defending Dave Chang. He said you should only order tacos four at a time so they stay hot. That way, when you’re ready, you can go back and get another round fresh. People were upset about that too.

But yeah. Two decades later, I still can’t stop talking about tacos online.

If you could create your own corner of the internet, what would it look like?

I already feel like I’ve created it with L.A. Taco because I’m the editor-in-chief. Every story is something I believe in. Either I wrote it or I wanted to read it.

Still, I’d expand it. I’d love to do more travel guides. I’ve always admired travel writers. I have friends who do it, and I’ve always wanted to do what they do. I’m actually working on a big guide right now for Ensenada.

Also, we started the L.A. Taco Media Lab. We’re working with younger students and aspiring journalist-creators. We want to help them get their first bylines. I used to do that all on my own. Now we have the framework to help more people do it.

The internet is better when we hear from everyone, not just the same old voices.

What articles and/or videos are you waiting to read/watch right now?

I’ve bookmarked a piece from Columbia Journalism Review about how journalists and newsrooms are using AI. I don’t want to be a grouch about AI. I also don’t want to surrender to it. Navigating [that tension] is something I care a lot about.

What’s the most L.A. corner of the internet?

L.A. Taco. We’re holding it down. No shame in saying that.

When we gather at membership events, it’s clear we represent the L.A. I fell in love with. A place where tacos unite people. A place where we do real reporting, research, fact-checking. Stories we talk about with our friends and families.

There’s nothing like this anywhere else. Not even in Mexico. Here, we have the power of the free press. And people always want to know where the best tacos are.

L.A. is hands down the taco capital of the U.S. No contest. Not Chicago, not San Francisco, not Texas, not New York. We’re at the forefront.

So yes, L.A. Taco is the most L.A. corner of the internet. No doubt about it.

The post The most L.A. corner of the internet appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Na 17 jaar stopt Mozilla met lees-later-dienst Pocket  DroidApp

Mozilla stopt met Pocket-app en Fakespot om zich op Firefox te focussen  TechPulse

Het einde van een oudgediende app  iCulture

Mozilla stopt met Fakespot en Pocket - Computer - Nieuws  Tweakers

Firefox is the only major browser not backed by a billionaire and our independence shapes everything we build. This independence allows us to prioritize building products and tools, which shape the future of the internet for the better. And it means we have to be intentional about where we invest our time and resources so we can make the biggest impact.

As users’ everyday needs evolve alongside with the web itself, it’s imperative we focus our efforts on Firefox and building new solutions that give you real choice, control and peace of mind online. 

With that in mind, we’ve made the difficult decision to phase out two products: Pocket, our read-it-later and content discovery app, and Fakespot, our browser extension that analyzes the authenticity of online product reviews. 

Here’s what’s happening 

• Pocket shuts down July 8, 2025
  • You will no longer be able to download Pocket or purchase a new Pocket Premium subscription from May 22, 2025. 
  • Premium monthly and annual subscriptions will be cancelled automatically. Annual subscribers will receive automatic refunds from July 8, 2025.
  • Users can export saves anytime until October 8, 2025, after which their data will be permanently deleted.
  • API users will no longer be able to transact data (read or write) over Pocket’s API from October 8, 2025 and will need to export their data before this date.
  • For more information, including refund details for Premium annual subscribers and how to export saves, go to our Pocket support article.
• Fakespot shuts down on July 1, 2025
  • You will no longer be able to use the Fakespot extensions, mobile apps, or website from July 1, 2025.
  • The Fakespot feature within Firefox known as Review Checker will shut down on June 10, 2025.

Focusing on what powers better browsing

We acquired Fakespot in 2023 to help people navigate unreliable product reviews using AI and privacy-first tech. While the idea resonated, it didn’t fit a model we could sustain. 

Pocket has helped millions save articles and discover stories worth reading. But the way people save and consume content on the web has evolved, so we’re channeling our resources into projects that better match browsing habits today. Discovery also continues to evolve; Pocket helped shape the curated content recommendations you already see in Firefox, and that experience will keep getting better. Meanwhile, new features like Tab Groups and enhanced bookmarks now provide built-in ways to manage reading lists easily.

Thank you for helping shape what comes next

We’re grateful to the communities that made Pocket and Fakespot meaningful. As we wind them down, we’re looking ahead to focusing on new Firefox features that people need most. 

This shift allows us to shape the next era of the internet – with tools like vertical tabs, smart search and more AI-powered features on the way. We’ll continue to build a browser that works harder for you: more personal, more powerful and still proudly independent.

The post Investing in what moves the internet forward appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Software-update: Mozilla Thunderbird 138.0.2 - Computer - Downloads  Tweakers

Software-update: Mozilla Firefox 138.0.4 - Computer - Downloads  Tweakers

The remedies phase of the U.S. v. Google LLC search case wrapped up last week. As the Court weighs how to restore competition in the search market, Mozilla is asking it to seriously consider the unintended consequences of some of the proposed remedies, which, if adopted, could harm browser competition, weaken user choice and undermine the open web.

Mozilla has long supported competition interventions in tech markets. Recent highlights include campaigns to pass the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, reports detailing the operating system power wielded by Apple, Google and Microsoft (among others), and detailed research into remedy design on Android and Windows to support the enforcement of EU Digital Markets Act.  

In relation to the Google Search case, our message is simple: search competition must improve, but this can be done without harming browser competition.

As the maker of Firefox and Gecko, the only major browser engine left competing with Big Tech, we know what it means to fight for privacy, innovation and real choice online. That is why we have filed an amicus brief, urging the Court not to prohibit Google from making search revenue payments to independent browsers (i.e., browser developers that do not provide desktop or mobile devices or operating systems). Such a ban would destroy valuable competition in browsers and browser engines by crippling their ability to innovate and serve users in these fundamentally important areas. As explained in our amicus brief:

• Mozilla has spent over two decades fighting for an open and healthy internet ecosystem. Through developing open source products, advancing better web standards, and advocating for competition and user choice, Mozilla has tangibly improved privacy, security, and choice online. Much of this work is funded by Firefox’s search revenue and implemented in Gecko—the last remaining cross-platform browser engine challenger to Google’s Chromium.   
  
• Firefox offers unparalleled search choice. Mozilla has tried alternatives (like Yahoo! In 2014-2017) and knows that Google Search is the preferred option of Firefox users. While Google provides the default search engine, Firefox offers multiple, dynamic ways for people to change their search engine.  
  
• Banning search payments to independent browsers would threaten the survival of Firefox and Gecko. The Court previously recognized that Mozilla depends on revenue share payments from Google. This was underlined by testimony the Court heard from Eric Muhlheim, Mozilla’s CFO. Eric explained how complex and expensive it is to maintain Firefox and Gecko and why switching to another search provider would result in a “precipitous” decline in revenue. Undermining Mozilla’s ability to fund this work risks handing control of the web to Apple and Google and further entrenching the power of the largest tech companies.
  
• Banning search payments to independent browsers would not improve search competition. Independent browsers play an important role in the ecosystem, far beyond their market share. The Court previously found that they account for 2.3% of US search traffic covered by Google’s contracts. As a result, the DOJ’s expert calculated that banning payments to independent browsers would shift only 0.6% of Google’s current market share to another search engine. This is not a prize worth destroying browser competition for.

At Mozilla, we believe that a more tailored approach to the remedies is absolutely critical. The Court should permit independent browsers like Firefox to continue to receive revenue share payments from Google to avoid further harm to competition. This would be a consistent approach with other jurisdictions that have sought to improve search competition and would not undermine the effectiveness of any remedies the court orders. 

To learn more about Mozilla’s position and why we’re urging the Court to carefully consider the unintended consequences of these proposed remedies, read our full amicus brief.

The post The future of the web depends on getting this right appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Software-update: Mozilla Thunderbird 138.0.1 - Computer - Downloads  Tweakers

As a product manager for Firefox, one of the areas I’m most passionate about is accessibility. This is not only because I’m a disabled person myself, but also because I’ve seen firsthand that building in accessibility from the beginning results in better outcomes for everyone. Our new profile management feature is a great example of this approach.

Shifting left means building accessibility in from the start

If you picture the product development process as a horizontal line, with “user research” on the extreme left and “launch to market” on the extreme right, accessibility tends to fall on the right side of the line. On the right side of the line, we are reactive: the product is already built for the needs of non-disabled users, so we’re just checking it for accessibility bugs. On the right side of the line, it’s often too late or very expensive to fix accessibility bugs, so they don’t get fixed. On the right side of the line, the best we can hope for is accessibility compliance with an industry standard like WCAG. On the right side of the line, we are more likely to build something unusable – even if we checked all the accessibility compliance boxes. 

So how do we ensure that accessibility moves to the other end of the line, the left side? One of the most powerful ways to “shift left” is to include disabled people in the process as early as possible. On the left side of the line, we become proactive: we build products with disabled folks, not for them. On the left side of the line, we prevent accessibility bugs from ever happening because we spot them in the designs. On the left side of the line, we have a chance to go beyond compliance and achieve accessibility delight. On the left side of the line, working together, we have a better chance to discover curb cut effects: solutions designed with people with disabilities that end up benefitting everyone.

How Firefox profiles shifted left

Firefox is not always on the left side of the line, but we’ve been working hard over the last couple years to “shift left.” 

I’m a proudly disabled university student who works full time and is passionate about rowing and musical theater. I made four profiles: medical, school, work and personal. Each profile has its own unique avatar, color theme and name so I can easily recognize and switch between them in one click. I especially love that browsing history, bookmarks and tabs no longer intermix. I’m now much less likely to accidentally share my health information with my professors or my strategic work plans with fellow Sondheim nerds.

Throughout this project, we partnered with disabled folks to aim for accessibility compliance and, more importantly, delight. They gave us valuable feedback from our very first user research studies and continue to do so. 

One group dreamed up brand new ideas and suggested enhancements during an in-depth review of an early prototype (including an awesome curb-cut effect we hope to share with you later this year). Testers who are experts in assistive tech (AT) pinpointed areas where we still needed to improve. 

This truly was a community effort. We learned a lot, and we have more work to do.

Try profiles now and help shape what’s next

While we’d love to make it available to everyone immediately, profile management is more complex than it probably appears: It’s built on core Firefox code, and it interacts with and affects several other features and essential systems. To ensure Firefox and the profile management feature remain stable and compatible, we need to continue our incremental rollout for now.

In the meantime, we’d love for you to use profile management on Nightly and Beta, where it’s on by default for everyone, then share your thoughts in this thread on Mozilla Connect, our forum for community feedback and ideas. You’ll help us validate fixes and catch new bugs, as well as get early access to new features and enhancements. 

At least 29% of the population is disabled, which means many of you have the insight and lived experience to help Firefox “shift left” on accessibility. That collaboration is already shaping a better browser — and a better web.

Get the browser that puts your privacy first – and always has Download Firefox

The post ‘Shifting left’ for better accessibility in Firefox appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Software-update: Mozilla Firefox 138.0.3 - Computer - Downloads  Tweakers

Today, Mozilla Chief Financial Officer, Eric Muhlheim, testified in the U.S. v. Google LLC search trial, highlighting the potential impacts this case could have on small and independent browsers, and the overall ecosystem. 

There are a few key themes of Muhlheim’s testimony that we’ll expound on: 

Mozilla’s search options are based on user choice 

Firefox users view Google as the best quality search engine. Mozilla experienced this firsthand when we switched the Firefox browser’s default search engine from Google to Yahoo between 2014 and 2017 in an effort to support search competition. Firefox users found Yahoo’s search quality lacking and some switched to Google search while others left the Firefox browser altogether.

Firefox offers its users greater and more easily accessible search engine choice than any major browser. From providing search engine shortcuts, to easy default settings and a range of options in the address bar, alternative search engines are readily available within Firefox. Put simply, our long-standing search strategy has been to evaluate and select the best search experience region by region, enabling choice for Firefox users with more than 50 search providers across more than 90 locales. We make sure our agreements do not make Google an exclusive search provider on Firefox or impede our ability to promote choice.

The breaking point

It’s no secret that search revenue accounts for a large portion of Mozilla’s annual revenue. Firefox is an independent browser — we don’t have our own OS, devices, or app store. Without this revenue, Mozilla and other small, independent browsers may be forced to scale back operations and cut support for critical projects like Gecko, the only remaining browser engine competing with Google’s Chromium and Apple’s WebKit. 

Innovation, privacy and user choice can only thrive when browser engines compete. Without that, there’s no push to make the web faster, safer, or more inclusive. If we lose or weaken Gecko, the web will be optimized for commercial business models and priorities, not the values that Mozilla champions for the web such as privacy, accessibility and user choice. The open web only stays open if websites, apps, and content interoperate and work everywhere.

Truly improving competition and choice cannot solve one problem by creating another.

The path forward

Following the testimony, Laura Chambers, CEO of Mozilla, emphasized what we’d like to see coming out of the trial by stating: “This case will shape the competitive landscape of the internet for years to come, and any remedy must strengthen, rather than weaken, the independent alternatives that people rely on for privacy, innovation, and choice.

Smaller, independent browsers, like Firefox, rely on monetization through search partnerships to sustain our work and invest in user-focused innovation. Without these partnerships, we’d face serious constraints—limiting not just our ability to grow but also the availability to provide a non-profit-backed alternative to Chrome, Edge, and Safari. 

This case is also about user choice. Mozilla’s approach to search is built around giving people options. Time and again, we’ve seen people leave our browser when forced to use a search engine they don’t prefer. Without search partnerships, independent browsers — like Mozilla’s Firefox browser and Gecko browser engine — would face severe constraints.

We recognize the importance of improving search competition. However, doing so shouldn’t come at the cost of browser competition. We believe the court should ensure that small and independent browsers are not harmed in any final remedies. Without this, we risk trading one monopoly for another, and the vibrant, people-first web we’ve spent decades fighting for could begin to fade.”

The post Mozilla’s CEO discusses testimony in U.S. v. Google search case appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Adlan Jackson is a writer, editor and worker-owner at Hell Gate, a New York City news publication founded as a journalist-run cooperative.

Here at Mozilla, we are the first to admit the internet isn’t perfect, but we know the internet is pretty darn magical. The internet opens up doors and opportunities, allows for human connection, and lets everyone find where they belong — their corners of the internet. We all have an internet story worth sharing. In My Corner Of The Internet, we talk with people about the online spaces they can’t get enough of, the sites and forums that shaped them, and how they would design their own corner of the web.

We caught up with Adlan Jackson, the culture reporter and editor at Hell Gate, a reader-supported New York City news site owned and run by journalists. He talks about YouTube’s cultural influence, the browser tab he shouldn’t have closed and joining his first online forum at age 11 (with parental permission).

What is your favorite corner of the internet? 

I’m a millennial, so I still think YouTube is maybe the most important and underrated social network. I feel like so much culture runs downstream from YouTube. 

I’ve got a few different niches. One is “A Song of Ice and Fire,” the “Game of Thrones” book series. I’m into the deep lore and theory videos, especially the esoteric stuff decoding symbolism. That’s my “chew through some hours” zone.

I also love watching performance videos. The YouTube of the late 2000s and early 2010s had this thriving music community. People would post covers, concert footage, TV performances — all of it. I feel like I developed my entire music taste and sensibility from those videos. That scene has kind of dropped off in the Instagram era, which is a shame, because Instagram just doesn’t archive like YouTube does.

There are still some people out there doing it, though. There’s someone on YouTube right now who’s super active in New York — they go to a ton of indie shows and tape them. I’ve actually been DMing them to ask for an interview, but they haven’t responded.

And yeah, I read the comments. YouTube comments on music videos are famously sentimental and mostly pretty positive. But I like the arguments, too. There’s a lot of generational overlap in the YouTube community, so you’ll see these debates play out that don’t really happen on other platforms.

What is an internet deep dive that you can’t wait to jump back into?

I’ve been really trying to understand online gambling.

I’m not a sports person, so the whole legalization and mainstreaming of sports betting completely passed me by. But it feels like it’s everywhere now — so pervasive that I feel like I’m missing out by not understanding the culture, how it works and why it seems to have hooked people so universally. Lately, I’ve been trying to spend more time in online gambling communities to figure it out.

What is the one tab you always regret closing?

I kind of have this eternal regret that there was some tab I closed that I shouldn’t have — and if I hadn’t, my life would be completely different and better. I have no idea what it was, but I’m sure it mattered.

I used to have hundreds of tabs open all the time. I’ve recently resolved to stop doing that and just close everything out regularly. But back then, I definitely felt like there were essays and Substack posts that were going to lead me to my next big story — and now they’re just gone.

What can you not stop talking about on the internet right now?

I try to avoid posting [on social media] too much. I used to tweet a lot.  Now, in my capacity as a blogger at Hell Gate, I can’t stop talking about the local music scene.

What was the first online community you engaged with?

It was probably this MMO RPG I used to play called “MapleStory” — a Korean side-scrolling, action-adventure, anime-style RPG. There was a forum called sleepywood.net. Sleepywood was a town in MapleStory, so that’s what the website was named after.

I was in there at 11 years old. I remember signing up for the forum — it was just an old style web forum. You had to be 13 or older, and I wasn’t. So I asked my mom, “Can you give me permission to be on this forum?” She wrote a thing, and they let me on.

What’s funny is, I could have just made it up. But I specifically remember that I didn’t. I really got my mom’s permission.

If you could create your own corner of the internet, what would it look like?

I think it would be a place where people feel empowered to create on their own terms. A space where independent media is thriving, and where people are more motivated to pay for work created by people they personally value — not by large conglomerates.

So, someone who skips a Netflix subscription but pays for their friend’s blog. Or someone who doesn’t have Amazon Prime, but subscribes to a local newspaper. 

What articles and/or videos are you waiting to read/watch right now?

Let me look. What do I have opened? The first thing on my YouTube is a Lord of the Rings lore video by In Deep Geek, which is a channel I follow pretty regularly. It’s about the Dead Men of Dunharrow,  the ghost warriors who join Aragorn at the gates of Mordor. I’ll probably watch that later today.

If the internet were designed to strengthen local news, what would that look like? Who should be responsible for making that happen?

I think the government should give money to local news outlets because we’re an important part of civil society. Mostly, I think the government should support local media. But it’s also nice when people really believe in it, too.

As for tech companies — it depends on the company. Some shouldn’t play a role at all. But unconditional cash? That would be great. Cash with no conditions attached.

Adlan Jackson is a writer, editor and worker-owner at Hell Gate, a New York City news publication founded as a journalist-run cooperative. He joined the team in 2023 to focus on arts and culture coverage — a beat Hell Gate has always embraced, but Adlan is the first staffer dedicated specifically to it. He covers what’s happening around the city and keeps readers up to date on the local art scene. His work has also appeared on Pitchfork, the New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker.

The post An NYC culture reporter on YouTube’s influence and the tab that got away appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Open a web browser and you step into a garden of forking paths — where news, messages, memes, work, learning and cat videos all compete for your attention. Every click sprouts another tab. Before you know it, your author has opened 68,000 tabs in one year alone, while some people manage to keep 7,000 tabs open for years. Firefox Tab Groups is designed to help you organize tabs, offering a better way to browse.

(Eager to try it out? Jump to getting started with Tab Groups.)

How too many tabs drain your focus and time

​​Research shows that tab overload can start with just five to eight tabs open. And when you factor in how many tabs we open each day, it’s clear we need better tools to stay organized.

If you use a browser at work or school, this scenario may sound familiar: You are writing in one tab when you realize you need information from another. You go on a tab hunt, scanning the tiny icons in your tab bar, skimming the first few letters of each tab title, navigating from window to window, searching for that elusive document or presentation.

You finally find it. Victory is mine! But before you can celebrate, you have to find your way back to that first tab. And so the cycle of tab re-finding begins anew.

Or you glance at your browser and feel overwhelmed. So many semi-random tabs open that the only solution seems to be to declare tab bankruptcy, close everything and start over.

These are all symptoms of information overload, the condition of having more information than you need to make a decision or complete a task efficiently. It is one of the defining challenges of our digital age. As former Google CEO Eric Schmidt once said, “There were 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization and 2003, but that much information is now created every two days.” Whether or not you believe the numbers, the feeling is real: We are surrounded by more information, more distractions and more tabs.

Firefox Tab Groups are designed to give you more control, whether you manage thousands of tabs or prefer to keep just a few open.

How to organize your tabs with Tab Groups  Firefox tab groups now available

Tab Groups add a layer of color-coded organization to your browser, making it easier to keep related tabs together. You can create groups for topics, projects or recurring tasks — like the news sites you read daily, ideas for a new woodworking hobby or research for an upcoming trip to Thailand.

Ideas for organizing your tabs:

• By urgency: Tabs for tasks you need to finish soon, like a “Friday to-do” list
• By frequency: Sites you visit daily, such as news or email
• By topic: Tabs for different courses, hobbies, or areas of interest
• By project: Resources and tools collected for an important project
• By type: Similar tabs grouped together, like PDFs or pages from the same site

Once you have a few groups set up, it becomes much faster to find your tabs and switch between tasks.

Getting started with Tab Groups

Starting with Firefox Version 138, available April 29, you can manage your tabs more easily with the new Tab Groups feature.

Here’s how to get started:

• Create a group: drag a tab on top of another, pause and drop
  
• Name and color the group (name is optional)
  
• Add or remove tabs from a group by dragging tabs in and out of a group
  
• Manage the group by right-clicking the group label. From there you can:
  • Create a new tab in the group
  • Move group to new window
  • Save and close the group to free up space on the tab bar
  • Ungroup tabs
  • Delete the group
    

• Reposition a group on the tab bar by dragging it
• Expand or collapse a group when you single-click the group label
  
• Retrieve a group. Browse all groups in the List all tabs menu (a downward caret in the top right corner of the tab bar)
  

See our support page for Firefox Tab Groups for more details.

Other ways to use Tab Groups

If you manage a lot of tabs, you might want to explore Firefox’s new Vertical Tabs mode. With vertical tabs, you can expand or collapse the amount of the tab title you see, which can make it easier to re-find the tab you need.

You can also combine Tab Groups with add-ons to manage your tabs even more efficiently. If you’ve ever closed a tab and wished you could get it back, Firefox has plenty of add-ons to help you recover and organize your tabs.

New APIs (tools that help programs work together) are on the way, giving add-on developers even more ways to manage tabs and groups. If you’re using add-ons with Tab Groups today, just keep in mind that some add-ons may move tabs into or out of groups, or close grouped tabs.

Making tab management even smarter with AI

Tab Groups make it easier to stay organized, but even with better tools, tab management can still be a chore — especially as your habits and needs change. 

To make it even easier over time, we’re exploring new AI-powered tools for organizing tabs by topic. You can try an early prototype today with on-device AI in Firefox Nightly, our next-generation browser for testing and development.

Shape what’s next for managing tabs

Try out Tab Groups in Firefox and tell us what you think in our community forum, Mozilla Connect.

If you want a sneak peek at what’s next, you can also test an early AI-powered prototype in Firefox Nightly and look for the “Suggest more of my tabs” button when creating a group. And unlike other browsers, with Firefox you can always feel confident that no one sees your tabs except you, even if you organize them with AI.

The web will keep growing and changing. With Firefox, you stay in control of your tabs and the path you choose to take.

Get the browser that puts your privacy first — and always has Download Firefox

The post Tackle tab overload with Firefox Tab Groups appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Easy-to-follow guides on how to transcribe audio files into text using privacy friendly tools and how to convert different documents into a singular format. Watch the live demo here.

As concerns around AI transparency grow, datasets remain one of the least visible and least standardized parts of the pipeline. Many are assembled behind closed doors, with little documentation or clarity around sourcing. Independent developers are often left without the infrastructure or tools needed to do things differently. 

Mozilla and EleutherAI’s year-long collaboration aims to change that. They’re releasing two toolkits that help developers build large-scale datasets from scratch—whether that means extracting content from PDFs, structuring web archives, or simply documenting what they’re using in a clear and reusable way.

These toolkits help developers get started with creating open datasets. The code and demos will be available on the Mozilla.ai Blueprints hub, a platform that helps developers prototype with open-source AI using out of the box workflows. 

Toolkit 1: Transcribing Audio Files with Open-Source Whisper Models

This Blueprint guides developers through transcribing audio using open-source Whisper models via Speaches, a self-hosted server similar to the OpenAI Whisper API. Designed for local use, this privacy focused setup offers a secure alternative to commercial APIs, making it ideal for handling sensitive or private audio data. Inspired by real-world use cases, the toolkit features an easy to follow setup using either Docker or the CLI. 

Toolkit 2: Converting Unstructured Documents into Markdown Format

This toolkit helps developers convert diverse document formats (PDFs, DOCX, HTML, etc.) into Markdown using Docling, a command-line tool with powerful Optical Character Recognition and image-handling capabilities. Ideal for building open-text datasets for use in downstream applications, this toolkit emphasizes accessibility and versatility, including batch-processing capabilities. 

Mozilla and EleutherAI’s partnership included an AI dataset convening, which brought together 30 leading scholars and practitioners from prominent open-source AI startups, nonprofit AI labs, and civil society organizations to discuss emerging practices for a new focus within the open LLM community, culminating with the publication of the research paper: “Towards Best Practices for Open Datasets for LLM Training”. The new toolkits are a final milestone in this partnership and are a resource to help builders action the best practices previously shared. 

“As AI development continues to move at warp speed, we must ask ourselves ‘how can we responsibly curate and govern data so that the AI ecosystem becomes more equitable and transparent’ says Ayah Bdeir, Mozilla Foundation Senior Advisor, AI Strategy “Today’s open data ecosystem depends on the community sharing its expertise and our partnership with EleutherAI is part of our commitment to support incredible builders who are iterating and experimenting on the front lines of open source AI.

Currently, the threat of litigation is often cited as a reason for minimizing dataset transparency, hindering transparency and innovation. Building open access data is the antidote. Building a future of responsibly curated, openly licensed datasets requires collaboration across legal, technical, and policy fields, along with investments in standards and digitization. In short, open-access data can address many AI challenges, but creating it is difficult. The toolkits from EleutherAI and Mozilla are a crucial step in making this process easier.

“Creating high-quality, large-scale datasets is one of the biggest bottlenecks in AI development,” says Stella Biderman, Executive Director, EleutherAI. “ Developers—especially those outside of major tech firms—often resort to whatever data is easiest to access, even when more valuable sources are trapped in PDFs or audio. These tools make it easier for open-source developers to unlock that data and build stronger, more diverse datasets.”

Update: On April 28, EleutherAI and Mozilla hosted an event to demo the two blueprints. Watch the demo here.

The post Mozilla, EleutherAI launch toolkits to help AI builders create open datasets appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Together, Mozilla and Anonym are proving that effective advertising doesn’t have to come at the cost of user privacy. It’s possible to deliver both — and we’re building the tools to show the industry how.

Today, we’re unveiling Anonym Private Audiences: a confidential computing solution allowing advertisers to securely build new audiences and boost campaign results.

Powered by advanced privacy-preserving machine learning, Anonym Private Audiences enables advertisers and platforms to work together using first-party data to create targeted audiences without ever handing their users’ information to one another. Brands can discover and engage look-alike communities — reaching new high value customers — without sending, or exposing their customers’ data to ad platforms. As the evolving advertising landscape makes third-party data less viable, Private Audiences supports privacy while enabling the performance advertisers have come to expect.

Private Audiences employs differential privacy and secure computation to minimize the sharing of data commonly passed between advertisers and ad networks. It operates separately, and is not integrated with, our flagship Firefox browser.

Why advertisers are turning to Private Audiences

Advertisers today are facing a difficult challenge: how to grow their business without breaking the trust of the people they’re trying to reach. Private Audiences was built to meet that moment — helping teams use the data they already have to find new high-value customers, without giving up data control along the way.

Early adopters are already seeing meaningful gains, with campaign performance improving an average of 30% compared to traditional broad targeting. And the reasons why it’s resonating are relevant to any brand looking to grow smarter and more sustainably:

• Find the right people, not just more people. Predictive machine learning helps advertisers reach new audiences that look and behave like their best customers — improving efficiency without ramping up spend.

• Keep trust intact. In sectors where privacy expectations are highest, early adopters are showing that it’s possible to respect user’s privacy and still drive results.

• Use what you already know. Private Audiences works with the tools teams already rely on. Audiences show up in platform-native interfaces, so there’s nothing new to learn or configure.

• Stay ahead of shifting standards. Private Audiences is built on privacy-first architecture — helping brands keep pace with evolving norms, expectations, and technical requirements.

How Private Audiences protects user privacy

In most audience-building workflows today, advertisers integrate directly with ad platforms to share customer data— whether through raw file uploads or automated server-to-server transfers. The platform then uses that data to build ‘look-alike’ audiences or, in some cases, retarget those same individuals directly. Anonym’s approach enables businesses to retain full control over their user data and employ gold standard protections, which are particularly important in privacy-sensitive industries and regions. 

Private Audiences takes a fundamentally different approach

Instead of sharing data directly with platforms, brands securely upload a list of high-value customers using a simple drag-and-drop interface. That data is encrypted and processed inside Anonym’s Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), where audience modeling happens in isolation. No data is exposed — not to Anonym, and not to the platform. Anonym trains the model, ranks eligible audiences based on likely performance, and returns a ready-to-use audience segment. Anonym’s ad platform partners only learn which of their existing users to include in the audience – they receive no new personal information or audience attributes. When the process is finished, the TEE is wiped clean.

The result: strong performance, without giving up data control or compromising on privacy.

Breakthrough performance and privacy capabilities with Private Audiences, and more

Private Audiences joins the ranks of Anonym’s other solutions: Private Attribution, which enables accurate view-through attribution without user tracking, and Private Lift, which helps advertisers understand incrementality without exposing identities. Together, Anonym’s tools represent a new foundation for digital advertising trust — a solution portfolio built on transparency, accountability, and respect for the people it reaches. 

Because trust isn’t optional — it’s foundational

Mozilla has always believed privacy is a fundamental human right, and we will continue our relentless focus on designing and delivering products and services to protect it. Advertising performance — as much as privacy — is a foundational part of this journey. 

Anonym Private Audiences is currently in closed beta, supporting early-use cases where privacy matters most. We’re excited to partner with all advertisers seeking a better way to build high-performing audiences without compromising your customers’ trust.  

For a deeper dive or beta participation details, get in touch with us here.

Performance, powered by privacy Learn more about Anonym

The post Ads performance, re-imagined. Now in beta: Anonym Private Audiences. appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Ever opened a bunch of tabs only to realize none of them have what you need? Or felt like you’re missing something valuable in a maze of hyperlinks? In Firefox Labs 138, we introduced an optional experimental feature to enhance your browsing experience by showing a quick snapshot of what’s behind a link before you open it. This post provides some technical details of this early exploration for the community to help shape this feature and set the stage for deeper discussions into specific areas like AI models.

Interaction

To activate a Link Preview, hover over a link and press Shift (⇧) plus Alt (Option ⌥ on macOS), and a card appears including the title, description, image, reading time, and 3 key points generated by an on-device language model. This is built on top of the Firefox behavior to show the URL when over a link, so it also works when links are focused with the keyboard. We picked this keyboard shortcut to try avoiding conflicts with common shortcuts, e.g., opening tabs or Windows menus. Let us know: do you prefer some keyboard shortcut or potentially other triggers like long press, context menu, or maybe hover with delay?

The card appears in a panel separate from the page, allowing it to extend past the edges of the window. This helps us position the link within the card near your mouse cursor, making it convenient to visit the previewed page, while also reinforcing that this comes from Firefox and not the page. We’re also exploring the possibility of making it part of the page, allowing them to scroll together or more separately, such as a persistent space to gather multiple previews for cross-referencing or subsequent actions. Let us know: which approaches better support your browsing workflows?

Page fetching and extraction

This initial implementation uses credentialless HTTPS requests to retrieve a page’s HTML and parses it without actually loading the page or or executing scripts. While we don’t currently send cookies, we do send a custom x-firefox-ai header allowing website authors to potentially decide what content can be previewed. Let us know: would you want previews of content requiring login, perhaps with a risk of accidentally changing related logged in state?

With the parsed page, we look for metadata, such as Open Graph tags, which are commonly used for social media link sharing, to display the title, description, and image. We also reuse Firefox’s Reader View capabilities for extracting reading time and the main article content to generate key points. Improvements to page parsing capabilities can enhance both Reader View and Link Previews. Let us know: which sites you find the feature useful and on which it might pull the wrong information.

Key points, locally generated 

To ensure user privacy, we run inference on-device with Reader View’s content. This is currently powered by wllama (WebAssembly llama.cpp) with SmolLM2-360M from HuggingFace, chosen based on our evaluation of performance, relevance, consistency, etc. Testing so far shows most people can see the first key point within 4 seconds and each additional point within a second, so let us know: how that feels for you and if you’d want it faster or smarter.

There are various optimizations to speed things up, such as downloading the AI model (369MB) when you first enable the feature in Firefox Labs, as well as limiting how much content is provided to the model to match up with the intent of a preview. We also use pre-processing and post-processing heuristics that are English-focused, but some in the community have already configured the language limiting pref from “en” and provided helpful feedback that this model can work for other languages too.

Next steps

We’re actively working on improving support for multiple languages, key points quality and length, and general polish to the feature capability and user experience as well as exploring how to bring this to Android. We invite you to try Link Preview and look forward to your feedback in enhancing how Firefox helps users accomplish more on the web. You can also chat with us on AI@Mozilla discord #firefox-ai.

The post Exploring on-device AI link previews in Firefox appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

I’m on my way to the Global AI Summit on Africa in Kigali on April 3 and 4, thanks to an invitation from the Ministry organizing the event. I’ll be speaking, but mostly listening and learning and hopefully connecting with people who are drawn to approaches that are open and creative. If you know someone at this event I should meet, please do let me know.

I’m scheduled to be the main guest at the Fireside Chat on April 1. I’ll also be participating in the panel “Innovating for a Healthier Future.” This panel topic combines open source and health with new AI developments. I’ve been working with OpenMRS (as a board member) on open source electronic medical records for better outcomes for some years. I’m eager to dive into the impacts of AI on this work with the broad set of experts at the Summit.

After the Summit, I’ll spend a few days in Nairobi. I’ll say more about the Summit shortly.

“I spend 8 hours per week trying to keep up to date, it’s overwhelming!”

“Integrating new libraries is difficult. They’re either poorly maintained or updated in ways that break compatibility.”

“I want to be able to experiment quickly, without relying on APIs for closed-source models.”

These were just a few of the challenges we heard from developers during months of interviews. Today, we’re excited to introduce Blueprints and the Blueprints Hub!

Meet Mozilla.ai Blueprints

The Blueprints Hub is designed to cut through the clutter of clunky tool integration and outdated resources, so you can focus on building, not troubleshooting. It’s a showcase for the best of the open-source builder community.

What are Blueprints?

Blueprints are your go-to, customizable workflows that enable you to prototype AI applications with trusted open-source tools. Each Blueprint tackles a real-world challenge, giving you a robust foundation to work from:

• Open-source power: Fully hosted on GitHub and built with the community.
• Ready out-of-the-box: Get started instantly with accessible setup options.
• Customizable and extendable: Use it as-is or extend it to fit your own needs.
• Consistent and templatized: Every Blueprint follows a core template to keep your workflow smooth.
• Community-driven: Contribute, collaborate, and be part of something bigger.

Our launch lineup
Kick off your journey with these five practical Blueprints:

• Document-to-Podcast: Turn your text into lively, multi-voice audio clips with minimal fuss.
• Structured Question Answering: Extract answers from structured documents with a simple workflow.
• Finetuning Speech-to-text: Fine-tune speech models locally for multiple languages or your own dataset.
• OpenStreetMap AI Helper: Use computer vision to detect and map features on OpenStreetMap, with Human Verification.
• Finetuning an LLM with Federated AI: Collaboratively fine-tune models across data owners without sharing raw data.
• Build your own Timeline Algorithm: Visualize, search, and re-rank social posts using AI without data leaving your computer.

Explore the Blueprints Hub

Our new Hub is built for ease and exploration:

• Instant demos: Play around with Blueprints live in the hosted demo. No installation required.
• Video walkthroughs: Follow our video guides for a step-by-step introduction
• Technical insights: Understand the technical choices made during development of each Blueprint
• Practical use-cases: See how other developers are customizing and extending these Blueprints for their needs.
• Join our community: Share your blueprints, learn from fellow innovators, and help expand the hub.

Ready to transform your AI projects?

Join us and see how Mozilla.ai Blueprints Hub can speed up your development and spark your creativity. Visit our website now to explore, experiment, and become part of our vibrant community. Your next great idea is just a click away! 

Ready to transform your AI projects? Explore the Blueprints Hub

The post Open-source AI is hard. Blueprints can help! appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.