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Meet Firefox 70. Here are the key changes

Mozilla is releasing a new version of their popular Firefox browser to the stable branch. Firefox 70 is now available, bringing WebRender to a larger number of users, comes with privacy and safety enhancements, and user interface improvements, including a new logo, a geolocation indicator, native (system) dark theme support for internal pages on Windows, and much more.

Firefox 70 is yet another release of the Quantum engine-powered browser. Since 2017, Firefox has the Quantum engine which comes with a refined user interface, codenamed "Photon". The browser doesn't include support for XUL-based add-ons any more, so all of the classic add-ons are deprecated and incompatible. See

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Must have add-ons for Firefox Quantum

Thanks to the changes made to the engine and the UI, the browser is amazingly fast. The user interface of Firefox became more responsive and it also starts up noticeably faster. The engine renders web pages much faster than it ever did in the Gecko era.

Here are the key changes in Firefox 70.

User Interface

First of all, you will notice a new icon set for the browser. The change has been planned some time ago. The new logo is intended to reflect the fact that the Firefox brand is more just a browser.

Firefox 70 About

The main menu includes a What's new item that unveils the key changes in the release. It has a gift box icon, which also appears in the address bar. Once you click it, it opens a welcome page with the release details.

Firefox 70 Menu Whats New Toolbar Icon

Firefox 70 Menu Whats New

Firefox 70 Whats New Pane

Finally, the user profile menu now has its own icon in the toolbar. It opens a menu that includes account management options, including sync, Firefox account, saved logins and passwords. Also, the menu promotes Mozilla's services, the Firefox Send file sharing service, and the Firefox Monitor security service.

The browser now applies the system dark theme to internal pages. See the following screenshot:

Firefox 70 Dark Mode For Internal Pages

Privacy and safety improvements

Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) has received a few more improvements. Now it includes social media tracking protection. Starting in version 70, it is enabled by default for all users by being included into the Standard option.

Firefox 70 Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP)

The social tracking protection tries to prevent cross-site tracking from the social widgets used by Facebook, Twitter, and similar companies.

There is a new Privacy Protections Report that includes a brief overview of your current protection settings, and also includes some stats regarding the blocked trackers.

Firefox 70 Protections Report

You can access it by typing about:protections in the address bar, or by selecting Privacy Protections from the main menu.

Firefox 70 Privacy Protections Menu

The report also has links to Firefox Monitor service and Firefox Lockwise, Mozilla's password manager which is available on various platforms.

Firefox 70 Protections Report Extra Links

Firefox Lockwise is a new service hosted by Mozilla and is tightly integrated with the browser starting in version 70. It supports login and password synchronization for saved credentials, and can display breach alerts using data collected by Firefox Monitor. You can use various methods to open it.

  • Type about:logins into the address bar,
  • Choose 'Logins and Passwords' from the new user account menu.
  • In Settings, go to Options > Privacy & Security, and click on Logins and Passwords.

Firefox 70 Lockwise

A new geolocation icon informs you when a web site is trying to use your geolocation data.

Firefox 70 Geolocation Icon

Clicking on the icon opens a flyout with details.

Firefox 70 Geolocation Pane

Other changes

  • Firefox doesn't render any FTP resources starting in version 70. It will always download the FTP contents.
  • The browser now respects the autocomplete="new-password" attribute for password input boxes in web forms.
  • The WebRender feature is now enabled by default on all Windows devices with modern integrated Intel GPUs.

Download Firefox 70

To get the browser, visit the following link:

Download Firefox

You will see a number of folders. Click on one of the following folders:

  • win32 - Firefox 32-bit for Windows
  • win64 - Firefox 64-bit for Windows
  • linux-i686 - Firefox for 32-bit Linux
  • linux-x86_64 - Firefox for 64-bit Linux
  • mac - Firefox for macOS

Each folder has subfolders organized by the browser's language. Click on the desired language and download the installer.

That's it.

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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.

One thought on “Meet Firefox 70. Here are the key changes”

  1. Thanks. I stayed away from Firefox for a long time as it just didn’t work the way I needed. While I loved Opera and it’s speed dial, there were more and more sites that were broken or I could not log in yet were working in other browsers.
    I tried Vivaldi which is impressive but Firefox had come a long way and finally I settled with v 69
    I just updated to 70 and none of my add ons are broken

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