fidzu : thunderbird

Today we're introducing a free built-in VPN in Firefox, a new IP-protection feature designed to keep you even more private while you browse. We're starting by offering an industry-leading 50 gigabytes of free VPN-browsing each month.

Firefox has long focused on building privacy tools directly into the browser to protect you online. Over the years, we've introduced world-class protections that block known trackers, reduce fingerprinting and limit how companies can follow people across the web. Our goal has been consistent: make meaningful privacy protections accessible to Firefox users every day.

Firefox is the only major browser to include a built-in VPN like this for free - giving you more control over your privacy, right where you browse.

Privacy built into the browser

Every time you visit a website, your IP address is shared automatically. IP addresses help websites know where to send information back to your device, but they can also be used to approximate your location, link your browsing activity across sites and keep logs about your online behavior, meaning websites can track your behavior. It's one of many ways companies track activity across the internet.

Additionally, when you're using public Wi-Fi while at a coffee shop, in a hotel, or in your dorm, people can spy on your network traffic and see which websites you might be visiting.

At Mozilla, we believe people should have stronger protections against this kind of tracking and spying, and that those protections should be easy to use.

Introducing built-in VPN

Our free built-in VPN is designed to make IP protection simple to use in Firefox.

The built-in VPN includes an unprecedented 50 GB per month of free VPN browsing, enough to cover everyday activities like shopping, banking, and reading.

Turn it on in Firefox with a single click. No extra apps. No downloads. Once it's on, Firefox routes your browsing traffic through a proxy network that replaces your IP address before it reaches a website. The sites you visit see the proxy's IP address rather than your own. Firefox already encrypts your traffic with HTTPS, but masking your IP adds another layer of privacy. You can mask the URLs you're visiting from anyone trying to spy on your network traffic on public Wi-Fi, like while you're enjoying a latte at your favorite coffee shop.

If you reach the monthly limit, IP protection is paused until the next cycle. Firefox will require you to confirm before proceeding without the VPN so your browsing doesn't unintentionally continue without IP protection.

Browser-level protection and full-device protection

The free built-in VPN helps secure your traffic while browsing in Firefox, making it a simple way to protect your IP address from being tracked by big tech. However, it does not offer full device protection.

For those looking for broader coverage, you can also choose protection that extends across your entire device, including other apps. The standalone Mozilla VPN subscription offers this capability with unlimited data across multiple devices. Depending on your needs, you can pick the level of privacy and protection that suits you.

We've heard concerns about so-called "free VPNs," which often rely on advertising or selling user data to generate revenue. Firefox's built-in VPN is designed differently. It does not sell your browsing data and does not inject advertising into your traffic. Instead, we offer a limited amount of browser-level protection for free, alongside Mozilla VPN, our paid, unlimited, full-device VPN service.

Read more about the differences between VPNs and web proxies.

Rolling out to Firefox users

The free built-in VPN is currently rolling out as a beta to Firefox desktop users in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and France, with plans to expand to additional countries coming soon over the next several releases.

As with many Firefox features, we're introducing it gradually starting in Firefox 149 so we can learn from user feedback and continue improving the experience.

Building a more private web

Protecting privacy online is an ongoing effort. As the web evolves, new technologies create both opportunities and challenges for keeping personal information safe.

Mozilla has spent years building privacy protections - from Total Cookie Protection to Private browsing mode to anti-fingerprinting - directly into Firefox so people have more control over how they experience the web. This built-in VPN is one more way Firefox helps you browse with less exposure and more peace of mind.

By continuing to build these protections into Firefox, we aim to make the web safer, more transparent and more respectful of the people who use it.

The post A free VPN you can trust, now built into Firefox appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

24 Mar 2026 4:00pm GMT

WebDriver is a remote control interface that enables introspection and control of user agents. As such, it can help developers to verify that their websites are working and performing well with all major browsers. The protocol is standardized by the W3C and consists of two separate specifications: WebDriver classic (HTTP) and the new WebDriver BiDi (Bi-Directional).

This newsletter gives an overview of the work we've done as part of the Firefox 149 release cycle.

Contributions

Firefox is an open source project, and we are always happy to receive external code contributions to our WebDriver implementation. We want to give special thanks to everyone who filed issues, bugs and submitted patches.

In Firefox 149, multiple WebDriver bugs were fixed by contributors:

• Sameem updated the screenshot implementations for both the WebDriver BiDi and WebDriver classic protocols to correctly return an error when the requested screenshot area exceeds the maximum supported dimensions, rather than silently clipping it.
• Khalid updated asserts for the WebDriver BiDi network wdspec tests to take a single object for the expected events, wdspec tests to use the "iframe" fixture when inlining iframes, and WebDriver BiDi client modules to validate data types in command responses.

WebDriver code is written in JavaScript, Python, and Rust so any web developer can contribute! Read how to setup the work environment and check the list of mentored issues for Marionette, or the list of mentored JavaScript bugs for WebDriver BiDi. Join our chatroom if you need any help to get started!

General

• Updated the Actions implementation for both the WebDriver BiDi and WebDriver classic protocols to allow a scroll action of input source type wheel to scroll more than the visual viewport dimensions.

WebDriver BiDi

• Added support for automatic user prompt handling, which can be configured through capabilities with the session.new command.
• Added the browser.setDownloadBehavior command, which lets clients allow or prohibit the downloads and also set a custom download folder. This behavior can be configured per session or per user contexts.
• Added the script.realmCreated and script.realmDestroyed events for worker realms (for dedicated, shared and service workers).
• Fixed an issue where the browsingContext.userPromptOpened and browsingContext.userPromptClosed events incorrectly reported the top-level context ID instead of the iframe's context ID on Android.
• Fixed the serialization for DOM nodes to stop exposing User Agent specific shadow roots.
• Updated the logic of applying different settings to new browsing contexts to make sure that in the case of creating a browsing context with the window.open command, emulations, viewport overrides, and preload scripts apply before the command returns.

Marionette

• Improved several WebDriver classic commands to handle implicit and pageLoad timeouts in line with the script timeout, allowing null values to disable the timeouts.

24 Mar 2026 1:23pm GMT

Don't remember why you have all those webpages open? Now you can leave yourself a note for any tab.

Tab Notes - our latest experimental feature in Firefox - are designed to help you remember, reflect, and pick up where you left off on the web by letting you attach a short note to a webpage.

Indicated by a sticky note icon and visible when hovering over tabs, Tab Notes notes remain connected to the page's URL until you delete them. Your notes are yours. They remain private and accessible only to you. Firefox stores them locally in your browser and doesn't send them to Mozilla.

Starting March 24, you can try Tab Notes by following these steps:

• Go to Settings.
• Navigate to Firefox Labs (or enter about:preferences#experimental in the address bar).
• Tick the box beside Tab notes.

Now you're all set! Just right-click or hover over a tab and choose "Add Note" to create your first tab note!

This work is inspired by user research that we conducted last year, which explored how people resume tasks after interruptions. One key insight we learned is that when we are interrupted, even a small reminder or message can significantly improve our ability to resume a task.

Many people use a variety of analog (e.g., sticky notes) and digital tools (e.g., note-taking apps) for these purposes as well, and Tab Notes are our exploration of that idea in a practical, lightweight way. These notes are easy to create, edit, and delete.

This is an early experiment, part of the Firefox Labs program. We are eager for feedback, which you can share on Mozilla Connect or by filing a ticket in Bugzilla.

The post Try Tab Notes in Firefox to leave a note on any page appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

23 Mar 2026 7:00pm GMT