Firefox Introduces Smart Window for Enhanced AI Browsing Experience

Starting today, the AI chat feature in Firefox’s Smart Window browsing mode can now access real-time web information and provide source links in its responses, thanks to a collaboration with Exa. This mode also introduces automatic tab group suggestions and visual previews of previously visited pages when you search your browsing history using natural language.

During a live demonstration, I saw how Smart Window AI could sift through your browsing history to retrieve items like “running shoes I looked at last week,” displaying images from the sites you visited. The tab grouping feature can identify and close duplicate tabs, making it easier to manage your important content. Instead of just presenting new search results, it organizes what you’ve already explored and includes citations for the information sourced from Exa.

In a blog post about the update, it was mentioned that this feature can assist in verifying answers or helping you relocate information, especially if you recall details from a page but not the specific URL. I’m eager to test its effectiveness, but Mozilla claims that beta users found it beneficial for maintaining their focus. Future updates are set to enhance the experience with features similar to Chrome, including a display of recent browsing activities and AI-powered autofill for online forms.

Smart Window remains an opt-in beta feature, and Mozilla’s head of Firefox, Ajit Varma, noted in an interview that there’s no specific timeline for when it will exit beta. Initially introduced last year as “AI Window,” this browsing mode allows users to search through open tabs or browser history using natural language. Mozilla has since added an AI Controls section in the settings, enabling users to disable all AI features or selectively choose which ones to keep active.

Varma emphasized that Mozilla aims for an “agnostic” approach to AI in Firefox, providing features like Smart Window for those interested without imposing them on all users. “They didn’t create a browser for you to go to Wikipedia more; they created a browser for you to generate more LLM and chat queries. For us, we’re focused on enhancing the overall browsing experience.”

Users can select their preferred AI model for Smart Window, including options like Google’s Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite, OpenAI’s oss-gpt-120b, Alibaba’s Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507, or even their own local AI models. “We’re ensuring that there’s an option for digital sovereignty, allowing you to choose local AIs or those from regional companies with different perspectives than the major tech firms,” Varma explained.

Firefox AI senior product manager Steve Truong stated that the models available for selection operate under a zero-data-retention policy. “When we collaborate with third parties for inference or API calls, we ensure they process user prompts in memory without storing data for model training, advertising, or human review.” He added, “We also do not retain user chats on our servers without permission for purposes like model training — we’re not creating models — and certainly not for human review or advertising.”

“We want to make it easy for users to customize Firefox to their liking, but we also don’t want to dictate a single way of doing things. We recognize our role as a neutral entity on the internet, aiming to cater to everyone,” Varma stated.

This “user-first, user-centric” philosophy includes adding new features and making adjustments based on user feedback. For example, Truong mentioned that the top navigation bar in Smart Window was added in response to user requests.