I dumped Firefox, but these 5 features finally won me back – here’s why

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ZDNET’s key takeaways

• Firefox has come a long way from its bloated days.
• Firefox now has just the right combination of features.
• Firefox is free with all features enabled.

My relationship with Firefox has been as up and down as it has been long. Over the years, I’ve stopped using it for reasons such as bloat, a lack of features, and even problems I’ve had with Mozilla as an organization.

However, during the past year, Firefox has slowly started to morph into the exact browser I want and need. 

Confused? I know I’ve been. But over the past week, things have become much clearer. While testing Firefox’s Smart Window feature, I found myself wanting to use the browser more and more. Why the sudden change? Honestly, the change wasn’t exactly sudden; in fact, it was the slowest of burns, and it involved several features that coalesced over the past year, as well as features currently available only in the pre-alpha “Nightly” build (but will eventually roll out to the regular release).

Let’s talk about those features.

1. The theming engine

If you’ve followed my work at all, you know that I’m pretty keen on aesthetics. In this department, Firefox has severely lagged behind the likes of Opera, Vivaldi, and Zen Browser. However, the Nightly version of Firefox has finally revealed its new theming engine, which may not be as dramatic as Zen Browser’s, but it’s enough to satisfy finicky users (like me) who want their apps to look as good as they perform.

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The Firefox theme engine is subtle. You don’t get to control gradients, and you can’t even choose custom colors from a color picker. Instead, you get a selection of gradients, but most importantly, the themes now apply to toolbars, menus, and messages (rather than just toolbars, as in previous iterations).

The nice thing about Firefox’s approach to themes is that it takes seconds to find and apply an appropriate one (instead of having to adjust color wheels or sliders to get it just right).

2. Vertical tabs

This feature should bring plenty of users over from other browsers. Vertical tabs are so much more efficient than their horizontal brethren. With a vertical layout, you can have considerably more tabs open, while still being able to see which tab is which. It’s also easier to control those tabs; you can move them into any order you want, move them, open them in new windows, or even open them in a specific Firefox container.

Also: Opera just gave me 5 compelling reasons to ditch Chrome and Safari for good

With Firefox, you can slide the vertical tabs so they are fully visible or appear as a narrow sidebar (depending on how much real estate you want them to consume).

The only thing missing now is Workspaces. If Mozilla adds a Workspaces feature, it’s game over for other browsers.

3. Containers

Speaking of Containers: this feature was added some time ago, and it’s important. The idea behind containers is to prevent one tab from grabbing another tab’s information. For example, you log into your bank account in one tab with one container, and any tab from another container wouldn’t have access to the information. 

Also: I replaced Google Search with DuckDuckGo and Perplexity – my results were noticeably better

You can create containers for certain tasks, such as banking, shopping, work, personal, etc. Make sure to open tabs in their associated container, and you’re safe. You can even use containers to open multiple accounts for the same service (such as your work Google account in one container and your personal Google account in another).

Containers is an important feature that should attract anyone serious about privacy and security to Firefox.

4. VPN

The Firefox VPN is currently in beta and is only available on the Nightly and Beta versions of the browser, and is being rolled out slowly. You have to log in to a Firefox account (using one of the supported versions) to access the VPN. 

What I like about the built-in VPN is how easily accessible it is. There’s a button in the toolbar you can click to open the VPN pop-up, where you can enable or disable the feature.

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The built-in VPN also lets you add sites that are exempt from the feature, so if you have sites you must use but that won’t function properly with the VPN enabled, you can add them to the list.

You can also select a region or use the fastest available. 

The Firefox VPN works very well and is about as convenient as it gets for a browser-based VPN.

5. AI

Before I mention this, I’ll say that my use of AI is limited strictly to research, and even then, it’s quite limited.

That said, I really appreciate how Firefox approaches AI. The Smart Window feature can be easily enabled or disabled, can use local AI (I’ve tested it using AI on a server deployed on my LAN, and it works great), and learns from your chats, via Moments. On top of Smart Window, you also get an AI chatbot in the sidebar. For the chatbot, you can select from different providers, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Anthropic Claude, or Mistral Vibe.

Also: I quit ChatGPT for a free, private, and local AI called Ollama – here’s why

Firefox handles AI with a simplicity and flexibility that other browsers do not, and I really appreciate that.