Mastodawn

anecdotal reports are that this makes Firefox noticeably faster

that list of settings to disable:

browser.ml.enable
browser.ml.chat.enabled
browser.ml.chat.menu
browser.ml.chat.page
browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge
browser.ml.chat.page.menuBadge
browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled
browser.ml.pageAssist.enabled
browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled
browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnabled
extensions.ml.enabled
browser.search.visualSearch.featureGate

@davidgerard no intention to judge, just curious - this looks like a screenshot from fedi, why did you share a screenshot instead of boosting it?

@sijmen @davidgerard It's from tumblr

https://www.tumblr.com/mckitterick/800783738647838720/irritatingly-the-list-of-ai-settings-in-firefox

Reblog by @mckitterick · 1 image

💬 274 🔁 59806 ❤️ 65158 · irritatingly, the list of AI settings in Firefox has grown. to kill them all as of today (Nov 20, 2025), go into about:config and set all of these to false (yes, you'll h…

Tumblr

@fleaz @sijmen @davidgerard wild tangent: wasn’t tumblr supporting activitypub?

Artha 🐲🏳️‍⚧️Dec 3

@yetzt @fleaz @sijmen @davidgerard They said they're planning on it like two years ago? Haven't heard anything about that since.

David Gerard Dec 3

@samerion @yetzt @fleaz @sijmen yeah, photo matt lost interest and it never went anywhere

@fleaz @davidgerard oh, my bad. didn't know the many different verified icons aren't just a fedi thing

Count Holdem Dec 2

@sijmen @fleaz @davidgerard To be fair; Tumblr can be a bit of a ... ... ... Jumblr

Ember is so tired of people.

@sijmen @davidgerard that's tumblr

Rodrigo Dias Dec 2

@davidgerard Good list. Applied, Firefox feels snappier already.

@davidgerard I've been thinking about disabling this crap for a couple of months, and yet I forgot every time. Thank you for a reminder

Federico Damián Schonborn Dec 2

@davidgerard yet there's still people who claim Firefox makes it easy to disable the "AI" crap

neocat_facepalm

Klaus Frank Dec 2

@federicoschonborn @davidgerard

Well to be fair, you don't have to recompile the browser like you've to for others...

@davidgerard Tech-bro consent basically:

> Yeah, you might go through this
> laundry list of settings to disable, but
> a) our expectation is that most
> people won't bother with it, and
> b) we are going to add new features
> that ignore these settings anyway

Klaus Frank Dec 2

@mozilla has become stupid. I really don't want to see them begging for money ever again.

They must have more than enough when they can do hostile shit like this. Also this attitude of blindly following every shitty trend of silicon valley causes additional points to be withdrawn...

@agowa338 @davidgerard @mozilla
This is where GNU IceCat is the ultimate solution.

@mozilla foundation have consistently shown utter contempt for their users and that they are no better than Google, Microsoft and Apple

LMR 🇦🇹🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏴‍☠️Dec 2

@davidgerard oh hey, maybe this will stop it from going full 90°C battery vampire on my laptop

@davidgerard You can just search "browser.ml" and click to turn every one of them off.

@rsalz @davidgerard is there a Firefox extension to do this everyday

:EA DATA. SF:Dec 2

@davidgerard is there any application at all, from any company, that makes genAI opt-in? Why do they all turn the shit stream on by default?

I know why. You don't have to tell me.

But I'm still allowed to be angry about it.

@jrdepriest
Vivaldi doesn't have AI and is against it.
@davidgerard

:EA DATA. SF:Dec 2

@bohwaz @davidgerard this might be the thing to get me to switch after being a fangirl since the Phoenix / Firebird era.

They're losing lifers like me and they don't even care.

@jrdepriest
There's other gecko based options though like palemoon and librewolf. I switched to palemoon when Mozilla removed xul add-ons. But the palemoon developer evolved in a racist recently.
@davidgerard

Winter Trabex Dec 2

Looking at that list, it looks like it's time to ditch Firefox.

I feel bad for all the library computers who are still stuck with Chrome and Firefox.

@[email protected] FYI, I made a similar post with a similar list on Nov 22, two days after the post you screencapped: https://buc.ci/abucci/p/1763845084.289082 .

I received a lot of pushback from people, including a person who claimed to work for Mozilla, the most common being "setting browser.ml.enable to false turns all these off so what's the problem?". This is false, though, besides being dismissive. It's also confusing (obfuscating?) since many of the settings are not in the browser.ml tree at all. Mozilla person suggested filing bug reports, which I found hilarious in that depressing sort of way.

Your list has one configuration option that mine lacked, browser.search.visualSearch.featureGate. My post has a few that the other post lacked, which I found on Stackoverflow and a blog post that I link. In total that makes 17 (!!!) AI-related configuration options in the latest Firefoxen.

Poking around Firefox's config I've found more that seem suspicious:
- browser.ml.chat.shortcuts.custom
- browser.ml.chat.hideLocalhost

Perhaps someone should keep a running list of these somewhere! Here are the 19 options so far:

- browser.aiwindow.enabled
- browser.ml.chat.enabled
- browser.ml.chat.hideLocalhost
- browser.ml.chat.menu
- browser.ml.chat.page
- browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge
- browser.ml.chat.page.menuBadge
- browser.ml.chat.shortcuts
- browser.ml.chat.shortcuts.custom
- browser.ml.chat.sidebar
- browser.ml.enable
- browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled
- browser.ml.pageAssist.enabled
- browser.ml.smartAssist.enabled
- browser.search.visualSearch.featureGate
- browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled
- browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnabled
- extensions.ml.enabled
- sidebar.notification.badge.aichat

Some of these probably are turned off by settings higher up the tree, but it's unclear to me exactly which subset needs to be toggled off to disable the lot of them.

Anthony (@[email protected])

Based on the answers to [this StackOverflow question](https://askubuntu.com/questions/1556081/how-to-disable-all-the-ai-features-in-firefox-to-increase-performance) and [this blog post](https://flamedfury.com/posts/disable-ai-in-firefox/), here are the 16 (!!!) AI-related settings in new versions of Firefox that you'll want to disable/set to false, and that might be turned back on with each update: - `browser.aiwindow.enabled` - `browser.ml.chat.enabled` - `browser.ml.chat.menu` - `browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge`

buc.ci

@abucci
why do you say it's false ? I'm curious.

Lin Jen-Shin (godfat) 🍥Dec 2

@julienw @abucci @davidgerard I have to turn off `browser.ml.chat.menu` or `browser.ml.chat.page` I can't remember which, to disable an AI feature that I wanted to turn off, despite both `browser.ml.enable` and `browser.ml.chat.enabled` are already off. It could be bugs, but it's hard to tell if it's fixed or maybe intentional. Now I just turn off everything to be sure and it's annoying.

@[email protected] @[email protected] Yes, thanks for verifying this. The only way to be sure is to turn them all off because both the naming and the behavior are inconsistent and confusing. I already pointed this out to @[email protected] once before.

@godfat Thanks, I'll check about this.

@abucci @davidgerard

Looking at the code, I think the chat intrgration doesn't obey the global switch indeed. I'll ask around but this may very well be on purpose, maybe because nothing happens until a provider is configured. Also I believe this sidebar can be easily removed ?

@abucci @davidgerard

Lin Jen-Shin (godfat) 🍥Dec 2

@julienw I don't think I have configured any provider unless there's a default one. I am not even sure if the feature I wanted to disable has anything to do with chat at all. It's an AI feature trying to summarize something in the menu. It's annoying because it's moving the menu items due to a delay and inserting a dynamic menu item. Whatever that is, a true global flag to turn everything off would be great. @abucci @davidgerard

@godfat
Thank you for the explanations.
I filed a bug in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2003760 so that folks look at it. Hopefully that will be solved.

@abucci @davidgerard

2003760 - browser.ml.enable doesn't control the control menu nor the sidebar's AI chatbot

NEW (nobody) in Core - Machine Learning: Frontend. Last updated 2025-12-03.

David Krause Dec 3

@abucci @davidgerard there's also a list here, but I haven't tested it:
https://github.com/Tiagoquix/firefox-annoyances/

GitHub - Tiagoquix/firefox-annoyances: Quick user.js customization to disable annoyances introduced by Mozilla in Firefox

Quick user.js customization to disable annoyances introduced by Mozilla in Firefox - Tiagoquix/firefox-annoyances

GitHub

Billy Smith Dec 2

A few of them I had to create before I could turn them off.

Reminds me of being a WindowsAdmin, and not in a good way... :(

@davidgerard Just search for “.ml.” and set everything you see at FALSE 😉

JM2€C

Major Denis Bloodnok Dec 2

@mora @davidgerard Three of the options mentioned above do not include that string.

Teun 🌏 ❤️ 🏳️‍🌈 🇺🇦 🇵🇸Dec 2

Good news: on Mullvad Browser they're all disabled and locked! (a few are missing completely, because Mullvad uses Firefox ESR 140.5.0).

So I will once again give Mullvad Browser free advertising, because it's honestly great: https://mullvad.net/en/browser

#MullvadBrowser

Free the internet with Mullvad Browser

The Mullvad Browser is a privacy-focused web browser developed in collaboration between Mullvad VPN and the Tor Project. It’s produced to minimize tracking and fingerprinting.

Mullvad VPN

@teun @davidgerard @mullvadnet

ピゴスパ Dec 2

@davidgerard I've lost trust in Mozilla and Firefox. Pains me to see this; I think I've been using Firefox for 20 years now.

But starting with all that Ad nonsense and user tracking provided by Firefox and the hassle of keeping up with disabling features with every update, I decided to put my trust elsewhere. And seeing this, I feel reassured in my decision.

I switched to Brave, because according to some independant tests, it's by far the leader in privacy regards.

How many of those independent tests looked at the Mullvad Browser?

If Brave works for you, that's great, but I find it hard to trust a browser run by a homophobe who injected ads directly into you're browser, hijacked links to secretly insert affiliate codes, and fraudulently asked for donations on behalf of other people without telling them, long before Mozilla decided to become an adtech company pushing A.I. into everything. @davidgerard wrote about it here:

https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2020/06/06/the-brave-web-browser-is-hijacking-links-and-inserting-affiliate-codes

The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

How does this keep happening? It is a mystery.

Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain

David Gerard Dec 3

@adamsaidsomething @pygospa and is a crypto scam

@davidgerard While going through this I also found you can disable the stupid tab groups feature entirely in about:config, which is not an option anywhere else, so that's an extra bonus! Thanks.

@davidgerard : most of them were already disabled in @librewolf but not all

@ploum @davidgerard @librewolf Some are redondant (disabling one disable the others implicetly).

gigabecquerel Dec 2

Josh Rivers Dec 3

@gigabecquerel @[email protected] I think they moved the setting under accessibility, breathing accommodations.

@davidgerard Follow the Arkenfox project and you'll have a way to apply automatically all of these nice settings: https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/1.1-to-arkenfox-or-not

1.1 To Arkenfox or Not

Firefox privacy, security and anti-tracking: a comprehensive user.js template for configuration and hardening - arkenfox/user.js

GitHub

@davidgerard thank youu David

clippy no like ai

@davidgerard just browser.ml.enable is enough.

@davidgerard sorry, that was wrong, this one currently just disables the AI stuff integrated into firefox but not the Chatbot-related stuff. I filed a bug in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2003760 so that folks look at it.

2003760 - browser.ml.enable doesn't control the control menu nor the sidebar's AI chatbot

NEW (nobody) in Core - Machine Learning: Frontend. Last updated 2025-12-03.

@davidgerard oh wow, they warned us from the future! everyone go thank this brave time traveller! they deserve to be praised for travelling back in time to save our beloved Firefox!

Barry Cook 🇨🇦Dec 2

@davidgerard - nice. Worth noting most of these (and a whole whack more stuff) are in the Betterfox user.js file - those missing an easy add from your Text app.
Just follow install instructions for the file on the website.

Daniel M Karlsson Dec 2

@davidgerard Thank you. This is very valuable information for me. There were two in this list which I had not caught.

@davidgerard at one point one will need to write an app to disable all this crap everywhere… 😞

@davidgerard Thanks so much for keeping us informed as Firefox weasels around with these revisions.

Thanks! :)

With an unmodified Waterfox browser:

- browser.ml.enable = True
- No browser.ml.chat.enabled
- No browser.ml.chat.menu
- No browser.ml.chat.page
- No browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge
- No browser.ml.chat.page.menuBadge
- browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled = False
- No browser.ml.pageAssist.enabled
- browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled = False
- browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnabled = True
- extensions.ml.enabled = True
- No browser.search.visualSearch.featureGate

@davidgerard
Thank you and, in the words of Guillermo del Toro, "Fuck AI"

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/guillermo-del-toro-ai-frankenstein-gotham-award-1236596868/

Guillermo del Toro Says 'F--- AI,' Earns 'Frankenstein' Gotham Award

Guillermo del Toro said 'f--- AI' after recieving the Vangaurd Tribute for 'Frankenstein' at the Gotham Awards.

Variety

@davidgerard Honestly, shame on package maintainers that don't patch this out.

Dustin Mitchell Dec 3

@davidgerard a tumbl from the future!!

Martin Vogel Dec 3

@davidgerard
It’s always good to have a friend with a time machine.