Firefox 70 is now available to download.
The release, the latest stable update to the hugely popular open source web browser, features a number of notable improvements and privacy enhancements.
Among the changes is the new Firefox logo we reported on back in June.
The new Firefox logo for the browser — there’s a separate new logo for Firefox as a product family — is as striking as it is colourful, and certainly helps give the browser a more ‘modern’ presence across operating systems.
But the “visual” changes don’t stop there.
Users will also now see an indicator in the address bar when loading a website that accesses geolocation data.
While most modern operating systems (I keep saying modern) already do a good job of alerting users to geolocation access, showing browser level status is a welcome boon nonetheless: you can never be too aware.
Firefox 70 includes a new ‘securely generated password’ option that works in HTML password fields.
To use it, users simply right click in an empty password box on a sign-up page or register form, then select the Fill Password > Use a Securely Generated Password option.
Rounding out the security and privacy updates, there’s yet more enhanced tracking protection, plus integration with Firefox Lockwise (formerly Lockbox; requires a Firefox account).
The ‘Firefox Accounts’ toolbar menu has been re-ordered and rearranged reorganised to give “faster access to account features and services”, Mozilla say.
And by that they mean they’ve added two hardcoded links to Firefox Monitor and Firefox Send web services in the menu.
Other changes noted in the release notes for this release:
- WebRender enabled by default on Windows + Intel devices
- New multiline editor mode in WebConsole
- ‘Vastly reduced power consumption’ on macOS
- Web Audio API improvements
- New ‘What’s New’ menu item
Also of note, Firefox 70 heeds the ‘dark mode’ setting (where applicable) for built-in Firefox pages, including the New Tab page, Customise, and Preferences.
Finally, Firefox 70 finally drops the ‘Quantum’ name that’s been in place since the release of Firefox 57 back in 2017 (not that anyone outside of Mozilla continued to refer to it as ‘Firefox Quantum’, mind).
Download Firefox 70
You can download Firefox 70 directly from the Mozilla website, which has builds for all major operating systems including Linux:
But you do not need to download Firefox 70 if you’re on Ubuntu, Linux Mint, elementaryOS, ZorinOS or Peppermint.
On Ubuntu-based distros you just need to open your desktop’s software update mechanism and install the Firefox update from there (thanks to the work of Ubuntu developers who maintain the Firefox package in the archive).