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64-bit Firefox soon becomes default for Windows 64-bit

Mozilla has revealed that 64-bit Firefox will soon become the default build for 64-bit Windows versions. In the near future, users whose PCs fit the hardware requirement will be migrated to Firefox 64-bit automatically.

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The shift is planned in two stages.
  • With Firefox 55 (August 8, 2017), the Windows stub installer will default to 64-bit Firefox for eligible users (64-bit Windows and 2 GB+ RAM).
  • With Firefox 56 (September 26, 2017), existing eligible 32-bit Firefox users will be migrated to 64-bit. About 70% of Windows Firefox users currently run 32-bit Firefox build on 64-bit Windows. Nearly all of these users can be migrated to 64-bit Firefox.

Interested users can read about the progress HERE.

Personally, I use Firefox 64-bit since quite a long time on both Linux and Windows. However, most of the time, I am using it on Linux. My distro provides the 64-bit version of Firefox by default, and it does its work perfectly. I have not faced a single issue for at least a year.

Firefox is a unique browser with a long and impressive history. It is an open source project and was one of the first browsers with support for building powerful extensions quickly and easily. It is special because it is the only modern browser not based on Chromium. It has a unique set of features and add-ons which are not available for other mainstream browsers.

I switched to Mozilla Firefox from classic Opera 12 and still prefer it over a bunch of Chromium clones. While Vivaldi looks promising, I can't stand it for my daily browsing tasks because of its performance issues. Firefox is unbeatable, mostly thanks to its XUL add-ons and well designed multi-profile implementation. Pretty soon though, XUL addons are going to be discontinued and replaced with WebExtensions in Firefox.

According to Mozilla, 64-bit Firefox will bring extra stability and security for users on 64-bit Windows versions, so they should benefit from this change.

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

10 thoughts on “64-bit Firefox soon becomes default for Windows 64-bit”

  1. A lot of great and still working add-ons are already not compatible with multiprocess feature of Firefox, and with 64bit versions.
    Furthermore, as they are XUL addons and quite old, most of them will never become rewritten as WebExtensions, which itself will significantly limit FF existing customizing potential, and will put FF in a row with Chromium based browsers.

    Security is a good thing to have, but as practically nobody use “clean” browser without extensions, i see, definite regress in Firefox future functionality.

    As for Vivaldi, i have never heard of performance issues with it. What issues do you have?

    1. its user interface is notable slow (hangs with a couple of tabs) and consumes unbelievable amount of ram.

      1. As a user of Vivaldi browser, i cannot confirm this.

        Consuming of unbelievable amount of RAM is a common “feature” of all chromium based browsers, especially with their behavior to open 1 process per tab.

        As for the interface hangs, i usually have opened no less that 10-15 tabs, and user interface has the same fluidity as Opera or Chrome.

  2. Would someone like to tell the wonderful smarty pants at Mozilla that I have yet to find one web based security camera that uses x64 version of Firefox.

    The Firefox version may work but the web app only works in x86 and if I am defaulted to x64 then I promise you I will go back to internet Explorer.

    It is apparent that the left hand refuses to talk to the right.

    With that, Firefox has become a pain to work with because it loves to block perfectly fine pages and doing things automatically FOR MY OWN GOOD because of course, they know better what is best for me.

    I am really getting tired of other individual thing on my behalf and I have to hack the crap out of Windows 10, Nvidia Drivers and now Firefox to regain function I had last year.

  3. Sergey, I agree with every single word you wrote about Firefox, Vivaldi and other Chromium clones.
    I’m using Palemoon x64, Firefox x64 and Cyberfox x64 since Opera 12.x has been abandoned.

    By the way, is there any chance to installa unsigned addons in Fireofx 54?

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