Firefox to get Bounce Tracking Protection, Profile Manager, and Weather Info in the address bar

The upcoming Firefox update is set to protect users against bounce tracking. Similar to Chrome, the browser will soon make it possible to manage, create, and launch profiles (with multiple profile support) right from the hamburger menu. These features are available and being tested in Firefox 127 Nightly.

Firefox is getting Bounce Tracking Protection in Nightly

Mozilla is working on a new anti-tracking feature called Bounce Tracking Protection. It works similarly to the existing protections against redirect tracking in Firefox, but instead of using a tracker list, it relies on heuristics to detect bounce trackers.

Firefox is enabling bounce tracking in Nightly in the dry-run mode first. When it is stable, Mozilla will fully enable the feature in Nightly. Bounce tracking protection is a web browser feature that prevents websites from using bounce tracking to monitor your browsing activity.

Here’s how bounce tracking works: When you click a link on a website, you might be secretly taken through a hidden website controlled by an advertiser or analytics company. This site might set a cookie or store information about your visit before redirecting you back to your original destination, often so quickly that you don’t realize it happened. Bounce tracking protection prevents this by identifying and clearing any cookies or data these hidden websites involved in bounce tracking may have stored about you.

Google Chrome and Brave already support bounce-tracking mitigations. Now, Firefox is set to join them.

Firefox will allow you to manage multiple profiles from the main menu

Until now, Mozilla Firefox lacked a Profile Manager like Chrome’s, where profiles could be managed seamlessly. You had to visit the about:profiles page in the browser for profile management. Mozilla is addressing this by developing the ability to view, manage, and create new Firefox profiles directly from the hamburger menu in the Profiles submenu, under the Sync and Save Data option. The Profiles submenu will display all the Firefox profiles you have created, allowing you to launch any of them, close the current profile, or create a new one. This feature is still in development.

Firefox to display weather in the address bar, with a catch

Like Chrome, Firefox supports showing rich suggestions from the default search engine, such as Google. An additional feature is the ability to display weather information in the address bar when you input the query weather. However, this feature is a sponsored suggestion, similar to Yelp.

The Firefox features that allow managing multiple profiles, protect against bounce tracking, and show weather in the address bar are being tested in Nightly and are not guaranteed to ship with any particular release.

Related to Firefox 127, we already reported, that Firefox is getting ability to close duplicate tabs, auto start with Windows, and selected text translation.