Firefox Smart Window new features: what Mozilla added
Mozilla added three new features to Firefox Smart Window on Tuesday, its AI-powered browsing mode, aimed at cutting down the friction of juggling tabs, searches and browsing history. The update brings live web answers with cited sources through a new partnership with Exa, smarter tab organization that groups related tabs and kills duplicates, and visual previews of browsing history, according to Mozilla's launch post.
Mozilla describes Smart Window as "privacy-first, AI-powered browsing" built to help people finish tasks they've already started, rather than a standalone chatbot bolted onto the browser, according to the same post. Ajit Varma, Mozilla's head of Firefox, said the browser already holds much of the context behind what someone is trying to do, from open tabs to pages already visited, and that "with Smart Window, we're exploring how to make more of that context useful while keeping you in control," according to Mozilla.
That framing raises an obvious question: how much browsing data does "useful context" actually require, and where does it go? Mozilla's own Smart Window Privacy Notice answers that in more detail than the launch messaging does, and it's worth walking through both the new features and the mechanics behind them.
What is Firefox Smart Window?
Smart Window started life under a different name. Mozilla first floated the concept last year as "AI Window," describing it as a user-controlled space where people could chat with an assistant while they browsed, according to Mozilla. The company spent the months that followed watching how people used it, gathering feedback and testing ideas before rebranding it Smart Window.
It isn't a settings toggle inside the regular browser. Smart Window is a distinct mode that builds on top of Firefox's "classic window" experience, and users can switch between the two at any time using an icon in the top right corner or the File menu, according to the privacy notice. Using it requires a Mozilla account, which brings its own data handling under the separate Mozilla Accounts Privacy Notice.
Mozilla has been building and testing Smart Window in beta with its community for several months, and it remains in beta even after Tuesday's additions, according to Mozilla. Rather than a full public launch, this is Mozilla layering three specific capabilities onto a product that's still finding its shape.
Firefox Smart Window AI features: Exa search, tab groups and history previews
The most visible addition is search that doesn't pull users away from what they're doing. Through the new Firefox Smart Window Exa partnership, Smart Window can now retrieve current web information and show the sources behind its response without redirecting to a separate search results page, according to Mozilla. The idea is to answer a question inline and let someone verify it, then get back to whatever tab they were reading.
Tab management gets an upgrade too. Smart Window can now suggest groupings for related tabs, making it easier to organize a cluttered window, and it can spot duplicate tabs and close them with a single click, according to Mozilla. Anyone who has opened the same shopping listing three times while comparison-shopping will recognize the problem this is solving.
The third feature addresses a more mundane annoyance: telling similar-looking pages apart in browsing history. Smart Window now shows visual previews of history entries, so users can identify the page they want among a cluster of similar results without opening each one individually, according to Mozilla. None of the three features is flashy on its own. Together, Mozilla says, they're meant to "keep a task moving across tabs, searches, and time," according to Mozilla's post.
Firefox privacy-first AI browsing: what the data policy actually says
Mozilla is explicit that Smart Window is optional and opt-in. Users choose when to use it, what browsing context it can draw on for a given task, and which AI model handles the request, with an off switch available through Firefox's AI Controls panel, according to Mozilla. That much matches the "privacy-first" label in the launch post.
The privacy notice fills in what happens once someone opts in. Smart Window infers information about users, called Memories, based on their interactions with the assistant and their Firefox activity, including activity in classic windows, though it excludes anything done in Private Windows, according to the Smart Window Privacy Notice. By default, that inference happens on a Mozilla server. Mozilla says it does not retain the information on its servers after processing; Memories are instead stored locally on the device and expire automatically after a limited period unless later activity signals they're still relevant, per the same notice.
Chat-style queries follow a more involved path. When someone submits a query in the Smart Bar, a local, on-device model first classifies whether it's better handled as a chat or a search, according to Mozilla. Only queries classified as chat trigger the deeper data flow: the assistant pulls in relevant stored Memories and browsing context to tailor the prompt, which is then sent in full to a Mozilla server and forwarded to a third-party large language model. Mozilla says the request includes only the information needed to generate a response, and the LLM's answer, along with the specific Memories used, is shared back in the chat window.
That distinction matters. The privacy notice documents server processing and third-party LLM handoffs specifically for chat-classified prompts; it doesn't establish that the same path applies to search-style answers, including the ones now powered by Exa. Mozilla also builds in several checkpoints along the way. Users can review or delete individual Memories, block Memories from a particular chat, or exclude specific pages from consideration by deleting them from history or bookmarks, or by closing the relevant tab, according to the privacy notice. Mozilla also says it never retains chat logs without permission.
Availability and Mozilla's broader AI strategy
For now, Smart Window works only in English, and only for people in the U.S. and Canada. Mozilla is offering a signup option for those elsewhere who want to be notified when it expands, according to Mozilla. Mozilla has also said it's no longer requiring a waitlist to try the feature, according to Mozilla's June roadmap post.
More is coming. Mozilla says it's working on features that would surface "browsing journeys," pulling together related tabs and history into a starting point when someone returns to a task, and on tools to help fill out online forms using information Smart Window already has, according to Mozilla. Both would require Smart Window to draw on more, not less, of a person's browsing context.
That tension between usefulness and data access is one Mozilla has addressed directly elsewhere. Firefox's AI Controls, introduced earlier this year, give users a single place to turn off all AI features, mute notifications about new ones, or fine-tune which specific tools stay active, according to Mozilla's interview with Ajit Varma. Varma said the controls came out of feedback from users who made clear they didn't want AI features at all, now or in the future, and that Mozilla wanted to make it easy to turn things off rather than force a choice on anyone.
Varma has also framed model choice as part of what separates Mozilla's approach from competitors that build their own LLMs. "We don't have billions of dollars spent on building an LLM that we need to force upon users," he said, adding that Firefox users should be able to choose the AI they want rather than default to whatever the browser maker built, according to the same interview.
Smart Window's next additions will test how far that philosophy stretches. Form-filling and browsing-journey recall both depend on the browser holding onto more context about what a person is doing, which is exactly the kind of data the privacy notice already flags as sensitive. Mozilla has said it will keep updating both the product and its privacy notice as Smart Window develops, which means the mechanics described here are a snapshot of where things stand now, not where they'll necessarily stay.
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