Mozilla has introduced Firefox 147 to its stable channel, offering stronger web protection with the Safe Browsing V5 protocol, better video playback performance on AMD hardware, native WebGPU for Apple Silicon Macs, and patches for several critical security issues.
Privacy and Security Enhancements
A major feature of this release is the browser’s update from Safe Browsing V4 to Safe Browsing V5, aligning Firefox’s defenses with Google’s most recent anti-phishing and malware framework.
Safe Browsing V5 adds a “local list mode” where Firefox keeps a privacy-focused list of threat indicators locally and only contacts remote servers when truly necessary. This design reduces the amount of user data exposed while still offering up-to-date protection against threats like phishing and malicious sites.
Instead of the older allow-by-default model, the updated system uses check-by-default to improve detection and blocking of harmful content. Firefox also leverages Google’s Global Cache — a curated set of safe domains — so that fewer remote checks are needed and most threats are handled locally while only anonymized hash prefixes are sent for validation when required.
The Safe Browsing V5 protocol additionally supports Oblivious HTTP (OHTTP), which enhances privacy further by hiding user IP addresses from Google using a third-party relay that doesn’t collude with Google.
For users who have Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) set to “Strict”, Firefox 147 now enforces local network access restrictions by default. This prevents websites from interacting with devices on your home or office network — such as printers or routers — without explicit permission, lowering the chance of abuse or exploitation.
Performance and Hardware Support
Firefox 147 also brings important performance upgrades. Most notably, WebGPU support is now enabled on Apple Silicon Macs, significantly boosting graphics performance for browsers and web applications that use GPU acceleration.
In addition, systems equipped with AMD graphics cards now benefit from zero-copy hardware video decoding, which enhances playback quality and efficiency. This improvement brings AMD feature support closer to what Firefox already offers for Intel and NVIDIA GPUs.
Security Vulnerabilities Resolved
Firefox 147 patches 15 security flaws, including several high-severity issues that could have enabled sandbox escapes, use-after-free bugs, and memory corruption leading to arbitrary code execution if exploited.
Firefox users are urged to update to version 147.0 immediately to benefit from the latest security fixes and improved browsing safeguards. The browser typically updates automatically, but users can also check manually via the “About Firefox” menu.
