Mozilla has begun rolling out Firefox 82 for users on the desktop. This update doesn’t come with very noticeable changes but does speed up the browser and includes a refined picture-in-picture experience that makes the feature easier to find for new users.
Instead of the blue, nondescript, picture-in-picture button that appeared at the side of videos before, Firefox now shows a transparent grey box on the right-hand side of the video in the lower half that explains what the button is and what it does. After the user has had a chance to read the button it will be displayed as a circular button with the picture-in-picture icon. Even when it has shrunk to this form, the icon is larger than before making it easier to understand what it does.
For users on Mac, picture-in-picture can be enabled by pressing Option + Command + Shift + Right bracket. This new command even works before the video starts so you don’t have to spend time waiting for the video to load before switching tabs. Firefox on Windows now uses DirectComposition for hardware decoded video which improves CPU and GPU usage while watching videos and improves battery life.
Another big improvement in this update is the general speed of Firefox. According to Mozilla’s release notes, websites that use a flexbox-based layout load 20% faster than before, restoring a session is 17% quicker, and opening new browser windows in Windows is 10% faster. Mozilla’s WebRender has continued to roll out to more Windows users which will make browsing even faster for that group of people.
Existing Firefox users on Windows and Mac should be automatically updated while Linux users will need to wait until their distribution maintainer pushes the latest packages. New users can go directly to the Firefox website and grab the latest software.
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