Mozilla finds a new way to make itself the default browser of Windows 11

Back in July 2024, Mozilla expressed its desire to extend Firefox support to Windows 7, 8, and 8.1, while other browsers like Chrome and Edge had already abandoned versions of Microsoft's aging operating system. The browser maker kept its promise, later announcing that Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 would be supported until March 2025.

However, Mozilla also understands that this is just a very small piece of the pie, and that the vast majority of Windows users are currently on 11 or 10, with an increasing likelihood (and perhaps even a need) to move to Windows 11 as soon as Windows 10 reaches the end of support. In fact, Microsoft itself seems to want everyone, even on PCs that don't quite meet the hardware requirements, to upgrade to 11.

Therefore, in Firefox 134 beta 2, Mozilla has added a new settings menu that automatically selects Firefox as the operating system's default browser during installation. As you can see in the image below, the "Set Firefox as default browser" option is pre-selected.

The "Support setting Firefox as default based on installer attribution campaign" patch is tracked under bug ID 1923868 which reads:

This patch adds an idle task on startup that sets the browser as default if it has the ID "set_default_browser" when first run. This task supports an upcoming Mozilla experiment where users will have the option to "download as default" via [[ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/ |

Users can also view the check during the "Finish setup" progress tracking.

This update comes shortly after Microsoft appeared to be trying to improve the default browser settings user interface after realizing how important default app choices were to users.

In addition to the new settings menu, Firefox 134 beta also includes hardware-accelerated HEVC/H.265 codec support on Windows.

You can refer to the changelog of Firefox 134 beta update on Mozilla's official website.

Micah Soto

Update 09 December 2024