How to Try Experimental Firefox Features Without Downloading the Beta

There are many ways to try upcoming Firefox features, but most of them involve using a beta version of the browser. For most people, these builds aren't stable enough to consider using as a daily driver. The good news is that's changing with Firefox 130: With this update, Mozilla added Firefox Labs to the public build of the browser, which allows you to try experimental features without sacrificing stability.

How to try experimental Firefox features

In order to try these features, you need to update your browser to the latest version. To do so, open settings, then head to General > Firefox Updates. If you're not yet running at least version 130, click Check for updates, then follow the on-screen instructions to install the update.

Once Firefox 130 is running, you can open this URL in the browser: about:preferences#experimental to view experimental features. Alternatively, you can click the hamburger menu in the top-right corner and navigate to Settings > Firefox Labs. Here, you can access all of the features Mozilla is currently testing. You'll have to manually enable the ones you wish to try.

At the time of writing, the following experimental features are available in Firefox:

• AI chatbot: Allows you to choose your preferred AI service and access its chatbot from the sidebar. The choices included Claude, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, HuggingChat, and Mistral.

• Automatic Picture-in-Picture: When you're watching a video and you switch to a different tab, this feature will automatically move the video to a picture-in-picture window. That way, you can continue browsing while watching the video, without needing to enable PiP yourself.

• Address Bar: show results during IME composition: You need to use an Input Method Editor (IME) tool to input certain complex symbols in some languages. This feature shows you search suggestions even when you're using an IME to type in the address bar.

All experimental features are disabled by default, which is great: I would have been annoyed if an AI chatbot feature was added without my explicit consent. In addition, it's important to note experimental features are ephemeral by nature. Don't be surprised if the list on this settings page keeps changing, as Mozilla adds new features to test out, or if some of your favorites are removed entirely. But even if they are, that doesn't necessarily mean they're gone: Sometimes, features will be removed from this page, but end up in the stable build of the browser. They're being tested for a reason, after all.

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