Mozilla has announced the availability of Firefox 68. Aside from it being a desktop update, it marks the first Extended Support Release (ESR) for business environments in several releases, and Firefox for iOS (v18) recently got an update too. With this update, Mozilla refines reader view, improves extensions, rolls out WebRender to all Windows 10 users with AMD graphics cards, and introduces Windows Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) support.
With Firefox 68, Mozilla has introduced ‘Blackout shades’ in reader view. The company noticed that lots of people toggle on dark mode but in the past, this only affected the text area, now, the sidebar and toolbars will switch to dark mode too so you can read distraction free. Another nice change pertains to add-ons, Mozilla has begun curating a list of recommended add-ons that have been reviewed for security, usability, and usefulness - the list can be found inside the add-ons manager in your browser. If you come across bad add-ons, Mozilla now lets you report them to boost everyone else’s security.
With this update, Mozilla has also added cryptomining and fingerprinting protections to the strict content blocking settings in the Privacy & Security preferences, it has rolled out WebRender support on Windows 10 computers with AMD graphics cards, and support has been added for Windows Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) which allows Firefox update downloads to continue when Firefox is closed.
With the ESR release, Mozilla has added more policy options that IT professionals can alter in order to make Firefox cater to their unique needs. Mozilla said that this feature has been requested ever since Firefox Quantum for Enterprise launched last year.
Last, are the changes to Firefox for iOS. With version 18, users will gain two new features which were highly requested. The first will allow you to edit bookmarks by reordering or renaming them or updating their URL, new bookmarks can easily be edited from the new Recently Bookmarked section. The second feature will let you always open websites in desktop mode. When you"re viewing a site in desktop mode you"ll see a badge just to let you know that you"re in desktop mode, this will serve as a reminder that you can toggle back to the mobile version of the site.
Firefox 68 and the new Firefox for iOS update have already begun rolling out to users. If you need to download a clean install, Mozilla’s website has already started serving Firefox 68 by default too.