Mozilla released Firefox 156 on Monday, September 14, bringing performance improvements to image and PDF loading, alongside bug fixes and sponsored suggestions. The update is rolling out to users beginning September 15.
The new version of Firefox reduces CPU usage when viewing large JPEG images. According to the bug report, Firefox 156 now utilizes libjpeg-turbo’s IDCT scaling to reduce images during decoding, instead of loading full-size images into memory and then shrinking them. Benchmarks show up to 20× less memory usage and up to twice as fast decoding for very large images, though these speed improvements are not expected to be noticeable to users.
Firefox’s built-in PDF viewer also received a speed boost, starting up to 45% faster. This is achieved by loading the background PDF.js worker sooner, rather than waiting until it is needed.
For users in France, Germany, and Italy, sponsored suggestions are now live in the address bar. These can be disabled through Settings > Search > Firefox Suggest > Suggestions from Sponsors.
The release addresses several bugs, including issues with dragging images in rich-text editors, FLAC audio playback on sites like Bilibili, subtitles in Picture-in-Picture mode, bookmark organization, and HTTP site loading when DNS over HTTPS was enabled. A connectivity issue affecting the built-in free VPN in version 155 has also been resolved. Additionally, Firefox 156 includes a fresh set of security patches.
This is the second release since Mozilla adopted a twice-monthly release schedule. Firefox 157 is scheduled for release in two weeks and is expected to make Firefox’s Nova redesign default.
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