Waterfox for Mac

What's new in this version:

Various fixes:
- Private Tab will now use your default selected private search
- The context menu search while in private tab will also open a new private tab instead of normal tab
- Fixed an issue where the Bookmarks widget in the status bar would not open submenus, so now all bookmark folders now work correctly when the button is pinned to the status bar
- Fixed a minor issue where the “Status Bar” entry in the Toolbars menu would output internal errors to the browser console
- Cookie banner handling no longer logs spurious errors when browsing localhost, IP addresses, or other internal hosts; in those cases Waterfox now silently falls back to the global setting
- Security fixes in MFSA-2025-9

Region & Geo Detection:
What was happening:
- Firefox’s Region subsystem could still make a one‑time request to Mozilla’s privacy‑preserving geo‑IP service to infer your country on first run. That inferred “home region” is used by multiple subsystems (search, DoH rollout, feature gating, telemetry). The backend is designed to be privacy‑sensitive and only runs once, but it was still an unnecessary external connection we’d rather avoid

What we’ve changed:
- Disabled network‑based region looku
- The URL used for region detection (browser.region.network.url) is now empty and locked
- Wi‑Fi–based region hints (browser.region.network.scan) was already disabled but is now locked as well
- Fixed, non‑dynamic “home region
- browser.search.region is now set to a fixed value (US) and locked
- This prevents any background attempts to “correct” or update your region based on IP

Why this matters:
- No calls are made to Mozilla’s region/geo‑IP services for normal browsing and features that still look at region see a stable, non‑changing value instead of one inferred from your network

AI & Machine Learning:
What was happening:
- None of the Firefox AI features or settings (AI link previews, chat integrations, etc.) were enabled in Waterfox, and no AI processing was happening in the background. However, some of the underlying onboarding and Labs migration code for AI link previews would still run and surface onboarding pop‑ups or UI
- The underlying local ML runtime (used for various experimental features in upstream Firefox) was still present and technically enabled at the pref level, even though nothing was using it. Built‑in chatbot integration points were already off in Waterfox, but we’ve clarified and hardened the settings

What we’ve changed:
- Core ML engine explicitly disable
- The main ML engine toggle browser.ml.enable now defaults to false
- Any feature that tries to create a local ML engine will now cleanly fail up front instead of starting an inference process
- AI link previews fully shut of
- browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled is now false by default (and locked)
- Legacy Firefox Labs state for link previews (browser.ml.linkPreview.labs) is forced to “not enrolled” and locked
- The opt‑in flag for AI key points (browser.ml.linkPreview.optin) is locked to false

This prevents:
- The feature from ever turning itself back on due to leftover Labs state
- Onboarding cards or AI link preview pop‑ups from appearing unexpectedly
- Chat sidebar integrations remain disable
- browser.ml.chat.enabled stays false, keeping built‑in chatbot UI off by default

Why this matters:
- Local ML/AI code paths are no longer reachable unless you deliberately override multiple locked prefs. Users migrating profiles from Firefox (including Labs experiments) won’t see old experimental AI features unexpectedly re‑appear in Waterfox
- Experiments, Studies & “Labs

What was happening:
- Waterfox already disabled Mozilla’s remote experimentation system (Normandy/Nimbus), but some features ran separately from this system (link previews)

What we’ve changed:
For link previews specifically, we now:
- Lock Labs and opt‑in prefs as described above