Firefox 69 Released for Mac with Improved Battery Life, Blocks Cryptomining

Mozilla has just announced the release of its Firefox 69 for Mac with several performance improvements and better battery life while also leaving third-party tracking cookies and cryptomining blocked by default (via VentureBeat). The browser is now available as a free download for Mac, a well as Windows, Linux, and Android platforms.

In addition to Enhanced Tracking Protection, that shows up as a shield icon in the address bar and automatically blocks third-party trackers while allowing first-party cookies, Mozilla is also cracking down on cryptomining which uses your CPU to generate cryptocurrency for someone else.

According to Mozilla, cryptomining is now blocked by default as part of the Standard setting in Firefox 69. It also blocks fingerprinting as part of the Strict setting, although the company plans to turn it on by default in a later release.

Below are the highlights of what’s new in Firefox 69:

• Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) rolls out stronger privacy protections.
• The Block Autoplay feature is enhanced to give users the option to block any video that automatically starts playing.
• For our users on macOS, battery life and download UI are both improved. macOS users on dual-graphics-card machines (like MacBook Pro) will switch back to the low-power GPU more aggressively, saving battery life. Finder on macOS now displays download progress for files being downloaded.
• As previously announced in the Plugin Roadmap for Firefox, the “Always Activate” option for Flash plugin content has been removed.
• Various security fixes.

For full Firefox 69 release notes and changeling, hit up this link.