Firefox for Web Developers@firefoxwebdevs@mastodon.social: @rayocentric Firefox uses ML language models to perform translation. These are local models - the text does not leave your device. This preserves privacy, unlike other browsers that send the data to the cloud. Firefox's tab group name suggestions, and link previews, are also local models, so privacy is preserved. All these features are also opt-in. Continued in next post…

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Reply to @rayocentric@mastodon.social
Firefox for Web Developers@firefoxwebdevs@mastodon.social (2026-01-27 18:38:04)
@rayocentric it sounds like you want to use "Private Window" for everything, but let me check that's actually what you want:

For decades now, browsers have observed what's typed into the address bar, so when you type some characters, it can suggest the mostly likely destination. Firefox does this locally, but the search engine also provides suggestions.

Firefox doesn't use AI for this.

Is this one of the features you want disabled?

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Firefox for Web Developers@firefoxwebdevs@mastodon.social (2026-01-27 18:40:17)
@rayocentric Firefox uses ML language models to perform translation. These are local models - the text does not leave your device. This preserves privacy, unlike other browsers that send the data to the cloud.

Firefox's tab group name suggestions, and link previews, are also local models, so privacy is preserved.

All these features are also opt-in.

Continued in next post…


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Firefox for Web Developers@firefoxwebdevs@mastodon.social (2026-01-27 18:42:40)
@rayocentric The "AI sidebar" is different to this. With that feature, you select which third-party service to use, and your queries are sent to that third party. But, imo that's obvious from the UI, just as it is for search.

Happy to answer any more questions!

Personally I think 'learning' is an important part of browser UX, and has been for decades, but 'learning' can still be done locally, in a privacy preserving way.