Firefox 136 is here: Mozilla brings vertical tabs and ARM64 support for Linux

Mozilla has released Firefox 136 for all supported platforms. These now also include Linux systems on the ARM64 architecture. The new version also includes a revised user interface with vertical tabs, improved hardware support and a modified handling of HTTPS pages. The email client Thunderbird has also been updated to version 136.

Choice between horizontal and vertical tabs

In Firefox 136, Mozilla breaks with its previous design strategy and offers users an alternative to the conventional, horizontal alignment of tabs. They can now also select a vertical view of the tabs in the settings. This is the developers' response to user requests. Users can also display tabs from synchronized devices, the browser history and bookmarks in the sidebar, which has also been revised. The integrated AI chatbot can also be added to the sidebar.

In addition, Firefox prefers to load HTTPS pages in the new version. To do this, the browser first attempts to establish an encrypted connection to the server. If it is not possible to load an HTTPS page, Firefox falls back on HTTP. If users deliberately want to call up an HTTP page, they can explicitly enter the protocol in the URL bar. Firefox also allows users with strict privacy settings and in private windows to selectively enable automatically blocked social media embeds.

Linux support for ARM64 and AMD GPUs

The update also includes a Firefox version for Linux systems with ARM64 processors. Mozilla provides an APT package for distributions based on Debian. Alternatively, users can compile the source code of the browser themselves from the tarballs provided. Flatpak packages will also be available in the future. In addition, the Linux versions of Firefox now use hardware decoding of videos on AMD graphics chips.

On macOS devices, Firefox now uses hardware acceleration to play HEVC-encoded video material. The macOS version of the browser also processes individual background tasks in the CPU's efficiency cores to reduce power consumption. In addition, Apple disk images of Firefox are compressed using the LZMA algorithm. The developers want to reduce the download time and increase the installation speed at the same time.

In addition to the new features, Firefox 136 has also received numerous bug fixes. All changes can be found in the release notes. Mozilla recently announced its intention to cross-finance the free Firefox browser with AI and advertising. A new version of the email client, Thunderbird 136, was released at the same time as the web browser update. Here, the developers revised the sorting options for messages and the dark mode, to which emails are now automatically adjusted.

In addition to the release of the new applications, the developers closed some security gaps in the Extended Support Releases (ESR). Mozilla has extended the end of support for Firefox 115 ESR on Windows 7, 8 and 8.1, as well as macOS 10.12 to 10.14 until September 16, 2025, the same date on which support for Firefox 128 ESR ends. A new ESR is planned for version 140 in June 2025. The email client Thunderbird 115 ESR has not received any updates since December. A direct upgrade from an ESR to the current version is not planned, but is only possible with a new installation.

(sfe)