Firefox Mozilla has always refused to use an ad blocker by default. Mozilla's revenue depends heavily on Google, and the company behind the world's most popular search engine isn't keen on the idea. Other browsers like Vivaldi, Helium, and Brave do include ad blockers, and Firefox might follow suit in the future. They're experimenting with this, and some features are already implemented in the latest stable versions of the red panda's browser (though they recently claimed it's a fox).
It was Waterfox who announced that this 2026 They would implement adblock-rustThis is what Brave uses in its browser, and it's based on uBlock Origin. But the truth is, it wasn't something Waterfox developed; Firefox is already experimenting with it, and the tests are available in Firefox 149 and later. However, at the moment, using it isn't at all straightforward.
Firefox with an ad blocker? It's a possibility.
Users interested in seeing what they are working on should go to about: config in Firefox 149 or later, and search there privacy.trackingprotection.contentThese entries will be found (via shivankaul):
- privacy.trackingprotection.content.protection.enabled: Activates the lock. Change it to "true" for it to work.
- privacy.trackingprotection.content.annotation.enabled: activates unblocked annotation.
- privacy.trackingprotection.content.protection.test_list_urls: List of pipe-delimited URLs for blocking. Edit this parameter with https://easylist.to/easylist/easylist.txt|https://easylist.to/easylist/easyprivacy.txt For example, so that it has blocking rules...
- privacy.trackingprotection.content.annotation.test_list_urls: list of URLs delimited by Pipe for annotation.
- privacy.trackingprotection.content.testing: triggers the observer notification when the list is loaded (for developers).
It's important to note that this feature hasn't made it to the stable version, and it's not very different in the Dev and Nightly builds either. We might see it in... about: config This means they're working on it, but it still needs to change a lot, especially if they plan to release something for the general public.
Why isn't it very useful right now? Because the setup and management are quite complex. For example, the original Brave Shields has a section in the browser settings to enable and disable lists, as well as manage custom filters. I'd bet that Firefox will have a similar section in the future, but I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll have to see where all this leads.