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Firefox 141.0 released

[Posted July 22, 2025 by corbet]

Version 141.0 of the Firefox browser is out. Changes include "a local AI model" that can perform tab grouping, unit conversions in the address bar, and a change that many of us will find welcome: "On Linux, Firefox uses less memory and no longer requires a forced restart after an update has been applied by a package manager".
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Unit conversion

Posted Jul 22, 2025 17:26 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (11 responses)

Sigh, who asked for that? Anyway, for me it's buggy. "1d to s" gives me 3,600 sec. No wonder the days seem to fly by. It also doesn't do compound units; "1km/h to m/s" doesn't do anything.

Unit conversion

Posted Jul 22, 2025 17:55 UTC (Tue) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link] (1 responses)

Yeah, this part makes no sense. Especially given the unit conversion is supposed to be, uh, entirely precise and deterministic process (both are things that generative AI sucks at), and also we have units(1) and qalc(1) perfectly capable of doing this with exactly zero AI involved.

It's getting harder and harder to continue taking Mozilla seriously.

Unit conversion

Posted Jul 22, 2025 19:26 UTC (Tue) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link]

Hold up, though. I actually looked at the release notes and the unit converter does not appear to be AI-powered. I seem to have misunderstood the LWN's summarization.

Unit conversion

Posted Jul 22, 2025 20:29 UTC (Tue) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link] (1 responses)

I believe it's interpreting that as 1 degree = 3600 arcseconds, which is technically correct but not what any normal human would expect.

Looks like the code is at https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/blob/FIREFOX_1... (plus adjacent files for temperatures and timezones), which doesn't have any support for time units at all. And it's definitely not AI, it's just a regex looking for "number unit (in|to|=) unit".

Unit conversion

Posted Jul 22, 2025 21:55 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Ah, thanks for the explanation. Also explains why it wouldn't convert nanometres to light-years. 😛

Unit conversion

Posted Jul 23, 2025 8:26 UTC (Wed) by gerdesj (subscriber, #5446) [Link] (1 responses)

"1d in s"

Surely that would be 1/12! There are 12 pence in one shilling.

Unit conversion

Posted Jul 23, 2025 9:43 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Glad I'm not the only LWN reader who initially wondered why old money was a new feature in Firefox.

Really showing our age here. ;)

Unit conversion

Posted Jul 23, 2025 9:31 UTC (Wed) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (4 responses)

I suspect that they have data showing that a reasonable number of Google searches made through the address bar are doing unit conversion (which Google does to a surprisingly high standard); e.g. if you search Google for "1 day in seconds", it suggests that you're looking for 86,400 seconds.

Given that this functionality is being used, might as well remove the network round trip. Now all they have to do is get as good at it as Google :-)

Unit conversion

Posted Jul 23, 2025 12:59 UTC (Wed) by roryi (subscriber, #25099) [Link]

I certainly do this often - ctl+l to get to the browser address bar is two keystrokes further than typing 'units' in my terminal, *and* the address bar method almost always auto-completes intelligently (unless I'm using really obscure units).

The list of units at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/solve-math-calculati... looks reasonable as a first pass, but I hope it'll expand to cover date/time and derived units ("mph to m/s" would be a good test case, if anyone from Mozilla is reading). I'd also really like it to at least do some basic spelling correction, rather than relying on me remembering how to spell farheneit, er, fahrenheit correctly first time...

I stick to whatever version of firefox-esr comes with Debian stable, so it'll be a while before I get this feature - I hope that, by the time I do, the firefox-native version is as good as the duckduckgo one.

Unit conversion

Posted Jul 23, 2025 13:04 UTC (Wed) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (2 responses)

They could use GNU units which does a great job. They could even convert it to wasm.

Unit conversion

Posted Jul 23, 2025 17:45 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (1 responses)

Aside: why the use of "convert" rather than "compile"? Is it really any different than any other target?

Unit conversion

Posted Jul 23, 2025 23:33 UTC (Wed) by KJ7RRV (subscriber, #153595) [Link]

I have never looked at the source code of GNU units, but since it's a command-line utility, I would assume it would need some changes to work as a library; perhaps that's what was meant?

De-pinned tabs *sigh*

Posted Jul 22, 2025 17:57 UTC (Tue) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (9 responses)

Sometime between 138 and 141, tab pinning changed so pinned tabs now scroll off the screen instead of being, well, pinned to the left (or top) of the tab bar (or sidebar).

*Sigh*. Hey Mozilla, kindly don't take away features people actually use! Also, what do you think "pin" means??

De-pinned tabs *sigh*

Posted Jul 22, 2025 19:55 UTC (Tue) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]

I have Firefox 140 here, and pinned tabs stay visible at all times.

De-pinned tabs *sigh*

Posted Jul 22, 2025 20:23 UTC (Tue) by ianmcc (subscriber, #88379) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm using 141.0 and pinned tabs stay visible on the left side, even when scrolling.

De-pinned tabs *sigh*

Posted Jul 23, 2025 6:05 UTC (Wed) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]

Owch. I know I'll have a ton of fun finding this problem then. Not.

De-pinned tabs *sigh*

Posted Jul 23, 2025 4:40 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (5 responses)

The pinned area can now be scrolled independently. You can drag-resize it using the separator bar. I was also confused at first, but it's…fine once you discover it.

De-pinned tabs *sigh*

Posted Jul 23, 2025 6:10 UTC (Wed) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (1 responses)

Well on my system the pinned and unpinned areas are *not* separate; there is no separator bar between them which I could drag.
No, I don't have an userChrome.css or similar shenanigans.

De-pinned tabs *sigh*

Posted Jul 23, 2025 11:23 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Does it happen with a fresh profile?

De-pinned tabs *sigh*

Posted Jul 23, 2025 13:15 UTC (Wed) by ceplm (subscriber, #41334) [Link] (2 responses)

I would be more interested in fixing the order of pinned tabs. I don’t know what I do, but order of pinned tabs changes all the time. It is hard to do https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2012/04/22/Tab-Lore with that.

De-pinned tabs *sigh*

Posted Jul 23, 2025 15:07 UTC (Wed) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]

Strange. I Never had that problem.

De-pinned tabs *sigh*

Posted Jul 23, 2025 17:47 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Mine are stable except where I have tabs pinned in containers other than those the "open in by default" page intercepts the initial load and I have to re-pin the desired container tab as the interception tab opening is unpinned. But I have 3 in one instance and 5 in another; not sure if my counts are low or high here (guessing "low").

No regressin testing?

Posted Jul 22, 2025 18:57 UTC (Tue) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link] (6 responses)

This very web site is showing up black-on-white, after I changed the theme. Google doesn't work properly either. I think the people at Mozilla ought to spend more time fixing problems and less time changing things.

No regressin testing?

Posted Jul 22, 2025 19:12 UTC (Tue) by daroc (editor, #160859) [Link] (4 responses)

Theoretically, the site CSS should default to using media queries to determine whether it should display the light or dark theme; I would not be surprised if an update messed with that in some way, because our CSS code is fairly obnebulated.

But you can override that setting in your account preferences, along with a lot of other details about how the site is rendered, as a workaround.

No regressin testing?

Posted Jul 22, 2025 19:46 UTC (Tue) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link] (1 responses)

Went to my LWN account settings and set dark-mode colors in 'bulk options" and it worked. I have no idea how that got lost just by updating Firefoxx...same problem with Google's dark settings.

No regressin testing?

Posted Jul 22, 2025 19:54 UTC (Tue) by daroc (editor, #160859) [Link]

If the same thing happened to another site, that makes me suspect that it was the media queries.

The way LWN site themes work is:
- If the user is logged in and has specified values in their preferences, that overrides everything
- Otherwise, if the CSS prefers-color-scheme media query is set to "dark" or "light", use that color scheme
- Otherwise, default to the light scheme

So if Firefox changed how it initializes the prefers-color-scheme setting, that could explain it; perhaps it used to pick up the "dark" default from your OS, and stopped doing that.

No regressin testing?

Posted Jul 22, 2025 20:29 UTC (Tue) by archaic (subscriber, #111970) [Link] (1 responses)

> our CSS code is fairly obnebulated.

Spelling aside, +1000 for today's word of the day! :)

"Obnebulated" (was No regression testing?)

Posted Jul 22, 2025 21:41 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Re: "obnebulated", the Oxford English Dictionary will need to update its page that currently reads: "This word is now obsolete. It is last recorded around the 1830s." 🙂

No regressin testing?

Posted Jul 22, 2025 21:42 UTC (Tue) by atai (subscriber, #10977) [Link]

It is a non-profit... and you are the tester!

More obnoxiousness

Posted Jul 22, 2025 23:45 UTC (Tue) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link] (2 responses)

Now, I can't hange the banner part of the screen to system defaults. I have dark theme working fine, but the address bar and all that at the top is a bright spotlight in my eyes. What changes have been made to the toolkit???

More obnoxiousness

Posted Jul 23, 2025 18:33 UTC (Wed) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link] (1 responses)

Oddly, the top of my screen has suddenly fixed itself. Maybe a reboot after 141 install fixed it....

More obnoxiousness

Posted Jul 23, 2025 18:39 UTC (Wed) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link]

This is embarrassing! I forgot that 141 uses themes for such purposes, and I had installed "dark theme" to correct my problem. I had to go to Google AI to find this out; I asked if Firefox still had a built-in "dark theme" and it said no, I would have to go to the themes site and download it now. Another waste of time....

Didn't they have autogrouping before

Posted Jul 23, 2025 9:25 UTC (Wed) by aragilar (subscriber, #122569) [Link]

I recall that autogrouping existed for the original tab groups (before they were ripped out). Are we now at the stage where the original reasons for decisions being made are so totally lost and forgotten that Mozilla is reinventing features they previously argued against?

AI for tab groupings?

Posted Jul 23, 2025 11:39 UTC (Wed) by arafel (subscriber, #18557) [Link] (2 responses)

It's unclear to me why we need a local AI model suggesting tab groupings... is that something people struggle with, and I'm not realising it?

AI for tab groupings?

Posted Jul 23, 2025 17:35 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

It's probably useful for people (like me) with so many tabs that we never bothered to go through them and set up groups.

AI for tab groupings?

Posted Jul 24, 2025 17:19 UTC (Thu) by Thalience (subscriber, #4217) [Link]

From what I can tell, the real feature is an abstraction layer for inference models. The tab grouping thing looks like just a proof-of-concept / example consumer of that API.

Maybe it's directly useful for some people, but I don't think that is why Mozilla developed it.


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