Firefox 132: Mozilla paves way for 4K Netflix playback

Mozilla plans to release Firefox 132 Stable today. The new version of Firefox ships with a number of major changes, including support for Microsoft PlayReady, tracking protection improvements, and more.

Both Firefox ESR versions — Firefox ESR 115 for older operating systems and Firefox 128.x — are also updated.

The details:

Support for Microsoft PlayReady enables “up to” 4K playback support.
Wide Color Gamut WebGL enabled to display “a broader range of colors”.
Enhanced Tracking Protection strict mode blocks third-party cookies.
Security fixes.

Firefox 132.0 download and update

Updates are designed to install automatically. This does not happen right away though and a restart of the browser is still required to complete the process.

Once the update is released, you may install it immediately by selecting Menu > Help > About Firefox.

You can also download the latest version of Firefox by following these links:

Firefox 132: major changes

Microsoft PlayReady

Mozilla Firefox for Windows is getting Microsoft PlayReady support for “select sites”. This enables 1080p baseline playback and 4K Ultra HD support “with key streaming partners”.

Mozilla does not say which sites or streaming partners are supported. The feature is rolling out over time to select sites.

Support for Microsoft PlayReady should also improve performance and reduce battery drain while watching shows and movies on the supported sites.

We asked Mozilla for clarification and will add the information, when we get it.

Tip: if you do not want the DRM, you can set media.eme.playready.enabled to False on about:config.

Enhanced Tracking Protection Strict blocks third-party cookies

Mozilla has enabled third-party cookie blocking in the strict mode of Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection. This is true for regular browsing windows and private windows. Firefox supports three tracking protection modes: standard, strict, and custom.

Other changes and fixes

Wide Color Gamut WebGL is now supported on Windows and macOS systems. This brings “a richer, more vivid range of colors to the videos, games, and images”. Support is limited to wider color (P3) profiles in 8-bit.
The new macOS screen and window sharing feature is now supported in macOS 15. Mozilla plans to extend support to macOS 14 in a future release.
Firefox will reopen automatically on macOS, if it was open before a system restart.

Developer changes

WebRender hardware accelerated rendering is now enabled for most SVG filter primitives.
Firefox blocks favicons served via HTTP, if they cannot be upgraded to HTTPS.
Copy Without Site Tracking is now inactive in the context menu, if the link does not contain any tracking parameters.
The text-emphasis-position property now supports the auto value.
The JSON parse with source proposal is now supported.
HTTP/2 Server Push is deactivated by default with the preference network.http.http2.allow-push now set to false.
Added support for a post-quantum key exchange mechanism for TLS 1.3.
Added support for Certificate Compression which reduces the size and increases the speed of a TLS handshake.

Enterprise changes

Coming later.

Security updates / fixes

Coming later.

Outlook

Firefox 133 will be released on November 26, 2024. This is the last major stable release of Firefox in 2024. The next release after that is Firefox 134 on January 7, 2025. Firefox 115.18 and Firefox 128.5 will also be released on November 26, 2024.

Additional information / resources

Closing Words

The integration of Microsoft PlayReady is a gamechanger for users who play certain video content on their computers in a browser. While some Firefox community members will certainly not have any of that, the bulk of users benefits from the integration. Those who do not need it can disable it and that is that.

What is your take on this new Firefox release? Anything particularly that you like or dislike? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Summary