Firefox has an ambitious new roadmap, the browser is also losing millions of users a month

[Alfonso Maruccia]

Looking ahead: Mozilla has recently made efforts to revitalize the Firefox project. The free, independent browser is expected to undergo significant changes over the next few months, and the company is now sharing some of the ideas its developers are working on. With any luck, it will be enough to stop Firefox from losing millions of users every month.

Mozilla is trying to innovate and bring new features to Firefox, but the browser continues to lose users. Despite these concerning market trends, the company is actively working to improve the ailing browser, so much so that it has published a new roadmap highlighting the most important changes coming to the project.

Mozilla recently introduced the roadmap alongside the changelog for Firefox 152. The latest release already includes some of the improvements listed in the roadmap, while other features have been announced for the first time.

The Firefox roadmap organizes upcoming changes by category. The "Productivity" section includes the previously announced Nova design refresh, tab group support on mobile platforms, and customizable keyboard shortcuts. PDF editing is also set to improve significantly, with new capabilities for splitting, merging, and reordering files.

Mozilla said customizable keyboard shortcuts are one of the most requested features in terms of browser customization. Firefox has always emphasized security and privacy, which is why future releases will bring a built-in VPN feature to mobile devices as well. For iOS users, Firefox will soon offer basic ad and tracker blocking without requiring external add-ons.

Firefox 152 introduced a redesigned Settings page, while optional AI tools are expected to soon include a "Quick Answers" feature that allows users to interact with chatbots using voice commands. Mozilla says Firefox is taking a different approach to AI than other browsers, and that users will remain in control of the LLM-based capabilities available in the software.

Performance, built-in safety protections, and new web API support will also be a major focus of upcoming releases. The latest version introduced experimental support for the JPEG XL image format, and HDR video support is finally arriving on Windows and Linux systems. Firefox users have been requesting proper HDR media playback support in the browser for more than six years.

Mozilla says Firefox has always been built in the open, and the new roadmap continues that philosophy. Meanwhile, the browser's desktop market share fell from 5.88% (May 2025) to 3.79% (May 2026), according to Statcounter data.

Ultimately, true HDR support and an updated roadmap may still be too little, too late to reverse the decline of a browser that has struggled to maintain relevance in recent years.

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Firefox has an ambitious new roadmap, the browser is also losing millions of users a month

 

[GeoffreyA]

I updated to 152 yesterday, and the new Settings is quite nice. In a world of lamentable UI design, Firefox shows rare skill. I applaud Mozilla for sticking with their own layout engine and, despite their failings, the pro-consumer approach, but performance must improve.

 

[Anton Longshot]

Long ago FF was my browser of choice...until it broke and destroyed my bookmarks in the process (luckily I always back up those) and stopped working altogether. For reasons beyond my understanding a reinstall proved impossible. It ended there and Chrome has been my main browser ever since.
A couple of months ago I decided to reinstall FF again - I only use it for things that do not work properly in Chrome which is super rare.
I don't think Chrome's going to last forever so maybe I'll switch back to FF sometime.
That is, if it still exists.

 

[Burty117]

Isn't Chrome supposed to be ending ManifestV2 to support any day now? Stopping Ad blockers from working properly?

I would have thought that would push people to move off Chrome and you'd see Firefox usage grow, but I don't keep up with Chrome, closest thing I get to a chromium based browser is Edge these days.

Edit: And Webkit actually, since I’m forced to use it on iOS, when are the EU going to get around to fining Apple on this?

 

[Axeia]

but performance must improve.

After having recently done some webdevving, Chrome/ium can do with a little less optimizing for speed.
Took me forever to figure out why it wasn't applying a backdrop-filter properly. Turns out it was caching the calculated result. Tried like 8 different workarounds before finding one that worked.

All 8 and the original approach worked flawlessly in Firefox.

The only sites I ever noticed being slower in person in Firefox (compared to Chrome) are YouTube and Google Docs. Both owned by Google and in the case of Youtube this was very much due to going for unusual design choices that seemed to be made specifically to slow down Firefox (the same thing could be achieved using regular techniques).

Now there's no denying that Chrome is faster (benchmarks can show it), but for regular use I haven't noticed a difference in quite some time. Even YouTube nowadays is fine.

 

[Endymio]

All 8 and the original approach worked flawlessly in Firefox.

I use Firefox (almost) exclusively, and the only thing persuading me to potentially quit aren't the lack of features, but the long-standing bugs. Tabs will sometimes spiral into consuming an entire CPU core, and there have been at least 4 times where an unexpected browser shutdown caused Firefox to lose all cookies/passwords.

 

[m4a4]

I use Firefox (almost) exclusively, and the only thing persuading me to potentially quit aren't the lack of features, but the long-standing bugs. Tabs will sometimes spiral into consuming an entire CPU core, and there have been at least 4 times where an unexpected browser shutdown caused Firefox to lose all cookies/passwords.

Losing cookies once every several years is annoying (happened earlier this year to me), but the main bug that they haven't fixed since I first started using it is dragging a link from a Firefox window into another Firefox window on the taskbar and it not popping up if the window is minimized.

Otherwise, I'm glad that I don't have to jump ship off of Chrome.

 

[Darad]

Isn't Chrome supposed to be ending ManifestV2 to support any day now? Stopping Ad blockers from working properly?

I would have thought that would push people to move off Chrome and you'd see Firefox usage grow, but I don't keep up with Chrome, closest thing I get to a chromium based browser is Edge these days.

Edit: And Webkit actually, since I’m forced to use it on iOS, when are the EU going to get around to fining Apple on this?

This is precisely the reason why I just downloaded Firefox: I’m addicted to Ublock Origin and so I’ll rather give up Edge than my favorite add buster.

I tried Firefox a few years ago but not in a serious way. The truth is I like Edge, but only up to a certain point. I want to shape sites in to my liking and to do that you need Manifest V2.

 

[cfenton]

I don't understand why people are using Chrome. I don't want a browser made by an advertising company.

 

[Endymio]

I don't understand why people are using Chrome. I don't want a browser made by an advertising company.

You realize that Firefox, Edge, Opera, etc all use the Chromium engine ... built by Google.

 

[Vixiy]

You realize that Firefox, Edge, Opera, etc all use the Chromium engine ... built by Google.

Firefox uses Gecko engine.
And it will still support manifest v2 for Ublock Origin after Chromium removes it soon.

 

[Endymio]

Firefox uses Gecko engine.
And it will still support manifest v2 for Ublock Origin after Chromium removes it soon.

You're right, I stand corrected.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

The best thing Firefox could possibly do at this point is really play up their support of Ublock origin and privacy tools. Just being another browser isnt working out for them.

Isn't Chrome supposed to be ending ManifestV2 to support any day now? Stopping Ad blockers from working properly?

I would have thought that would push people to move off Chrome and you'd see Firefox usage grow, but I don't keep up with Chrome, closest thing I get to a chromium based browser is Edge these days.

Edit: And Webkit actually, since I’m forced to use it on iOS, when are the EU going to get around to fining Apple on this?

Chrome ended Manifest V2 support last year.

They are removing the legacy fallback flags that Chromium models use to enable Ublock on the back with the newest update. All Chromium browsers, eg everything but firefox, waterfox, librewolf, and whatever other fox offshots exist, are affected by this. We dont know yet if the likes of Brave will build a new workaround for this or not.

This was covered extensively earlier by techspot.
https://www.techspot.com/news/112722-end-ublock-origin-chrome-now-weeks-away-not.html

As for Webkit, Per the EU rules any browser maker can make their own iOS based browser, problem of course is that, aside from Google not having bothered yet so there is no Chromium build for iOS, is that sideloaded apps are not allowed to do JIT compilation which is disastrous for performance, and the EU wrote the rules to allow this. So good luck, gonna take another 15 years of fighting to reverse that.

 

[Dr Roboto]

I’ve used Firefox daily since the early 2000s on both Windows and Linux, and I’m using it right now. For the most part, I rarely have any problems with it. It just works 99% of the time.

Maybe I’m old-school, but I prefer having my bookmarks in the sidebar. I’ve never liked the way Chrome and Edge display them across the top.

Over the years, I’ve also come to distrust Chrome and Google in general. Their priorities seem to be clicks, advertising, and collecting user data, so I generally try to avoid their products. I can’t remember the last time I used Chrome directly. I know Edge is Chromium-based, but sometimes there isn’t much choice.

That said, some websites still don’t render correctly in Firefox. It happens much less often these days, but I occasionally encounter editing fields, drop-down menus, or buttons that don’t display or function properly. In those cases, I just open the page in Edge.

At the end of the day, it’s just a web browser, so I’m not sure it’s a major issue in the grand scheme of things. Would I prefer Firefox to work perfectly on every site so I never need Edge? Sure. But I have bigger things to worry about.

 

[retrodeg]

You realize that Firefox, Edge, Opera, etc all use the Chromium engine ... built by Google.

Outside of safari, firefox is the only outlier and it's been that way for like 5+ years since edge finally went chromium

 

[bviktor]

I really don’t understand why people use Chromium based browsers (which is pretty much anything besides Firefox), especially since the MV3 debacle. It’s like people actually like being pissed on.

 

[abactuon]

Google is simply a hyped-up company, and many people think everything it does is cool and that they themselves will be cooler if they use Google products. There's no way to change that.
I’m writing this in Firefox, but through a Google LLC proxy server.

 

[CrisisDog]

I’m lazy and just use Edge on Windows. But Firefox is my go-to for all my Linux loads. Glad it is still hanging around…

 

[Superconductor]

Firefox turned into utter garbage 2 to 3 years ago...

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Firefox is what I use. Used Chrome up until they announced the discontinued support for MV2. I happened to actually disable Chrome from updating a little while before that because of some shitty UI update they pushed out that irritated me so much at work, I refused to have it be part of my web browsing life at home.

My Chrome is on Version 114.0.5735.110 (which was released on June 5th, 2023). Looks like I just passed 3 years of not using Chrome. Ublock still works on my version of Chrome should I have to use it.....
I only keep it around because the wife says she "has" to use it. Reality is, she's too lazy to get the passwords again from her work to log into their web stuff when she's working from home.

 

[scoffer]

You're right, I stand corrected.

ooooops.................

 

[Alfonso Maruccia]

I don't understand why people are using Chrome. I don't want a browser made by an advertising company.

Because they shoved the browser down the world's throat with the longest, most pervasive, obsessive advertising campaign I have ever witnessed. A few years ago, Chrome was genuinely a great technology product. But I was also calling it the "Lady Gaga browser", because they were advertising the damn thing everywhere and to everyone.

 

[human7]

Firefox turned into utter garbage 2 to 3 years ago...

Firefox? Or Mozilla? I believe you if you mean Mozilla, except for the "2 to 3 years ago" part. Mozilla has been a solution searching for a problem for many a year now, thinking it "needs" profits when it, being a non-profit, simply doesn't.

I've been using Firefox since... um... a long time ago, in a lifetime far far away. No idea. 2003 maybe? Whatever, point is, Firefox didn't change much in 2023-2024. Like, I don't even remember there being a huge update then. Firefox quantum was, what, 10 years ago now? That's the last big change I remember.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I really don’t understand why people use Chromium based browsers (which is pretty much anything besides Firefox), especially since the MV3 debacle. It’s like people actually like being pissed on.

Because the modern web is built around them and, frankly, Chrome is still the fastest one out there.

There are sites and functions that dont work well with Firefox. I still cant get Kick donations or messages of any kind working properly in Firefox, but it works in everything else. Our business tools at work are built around Chrome and dont display correctly in Firefox. I'm sure other examples exist. Then there's Firefox's random freakouts where things get deleted, the utter mess that is their backend code, and the company's many controversies over user data and privacy that makes you wonder if they are actually any better then Chrome is.

Here's the biggest issue: Blocking ads, Manifest V2, ece only matter to uber tech nerds. Normal people still consider the internet to be a magic box that is far beyond human understanding, and the problem isnt getting any better. To them it makes no difference what browser you are using, they dont even know what a browser IS.

 

[Ramzz]

You realize that Firefox, Edge, Opera, etc all use the Chromium engine ... built by Google.

Even if they are built on the same engine, one can easily install a browser built on chromium but that has all the bloat and google tracking/telemetry stripped up. Brave is a good example.