Firefox Update Brings Native Support for Apple M1 Macs, Mozilla Touts Dramatic Performance Improvements

Garlan

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posted on 3 years ago — updated on 1 second ago

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The latest Mozilla Firefox 84 also carries WebRender engine for Apple Macs running macOS Big Sur to load web pages faster and smoother. Last month, Google rolled out native Chrome for the M1-powered Apple Macs as well.

The Mozilla Firefox is rolling out a new update that brings its native support for Apple Macs running M1 processor. The development essentially means that users with new M1-powered Apple MacBook Air 13, Apple MacBook Pro 13, and Apple Mac mini can now enjoy the optimised version for the browser that is said to run faster in comparison to the previous generation that ran through the Rosetta emulation mode. The latest Firefox iteration v84 is now available to users globally.

The company in a blog post further said that the Mozilla Firefox v84 brings WebRender for Apple Macs running macOS Big Sur and Windows devices with Intel Gen 6 GPUs as well as Intel laptops running Windows 7 and 8. The WebRender engine aims to make rendering of web pages both faster and smoother without hampering graphics. Mozilla says that it would ship an accelerated rendering pipeline for Linux/GNOME/X11 users for the first time ever. Besides, “Firefox now uses more modern techniques for allocating shared memory on Linux, improving performance and increasing compatibility with Docker,” the company added. Notably, the Firefox 84 is also the final release to support Adobe Flash. Recently, Adobe said that it would start blocking Flash content from running starting January 12, 2021. Moreover, the latest update carries “various security fixes” for Firefox browser.

Apple users with M1 Mac can either download the browser from Firefox website or Apple App store. Existing users can update by heading to Firefox > Go to Firefox menu at the top of the screen > Select Quit Firefox > When you re-open Firefox, you will be on the new architecture. The company adds that M1 Mac users can check whether they are using the optimised version by entering ‘about:support’ in the address bar. If it shows “Rosetta Translated False,” it means you’re on the latest version. Recently, Microsoft also announced that it is rolling out the native version of Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for M1 Macs by Apple. Last month, Google rolled out native Chrome for the new devices as well.

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