Firefox 160 is Due November 10--WebGL on the Mac Moves to Apple's Metal, Picture-in-Picture Gets a Playback Speed Slider, a Mini Window Pins Part of a Page on Top, and Four macOS Fixes, by Mozilla's Beta Notes, While the Final Notes Page Still Says Check Back Later

2026November 9, 2026Macs Only!Internet
A Firefox Picture-in-Picture window plays a video of a yellowed printed page of Ukrainian verse captioned "Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow"; a dark Playback speed panel is open over it with a slider at 1x and buttons for 0.75x, 1.0x, 1.25x, 1.5x and 2.0x, and the time readout shows 10:24 of 52:45.
Image: Mozilla · A Firefox Picture-in-Picture window plays a video of a yellowed printed page of Ukrainian verse captioned "Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow"; a dark Playback speed panel is open over it with a slider at 1x and buttons for 0.75x, 1.0x, 1.25x, 1.5x and 2.0x, and the time readout shows 10:24 of 52:45.

Firefox 160 is due on Tuesday, November 10, which Mozilla's release schedule for the version puts at 14:00 UTC, 6 a.m. Pacific, with an initial 25 percent rollout. As of November 9 the final release notes page says only that Mozilla is "still preparing the notes for this release," so what is known comes from the 160.0beta release notes of October 26, and for a Mac user the first line is the one that matters: "WebGL content on macOS is now rendered using Apple's Metal graphics API, which can improve performance on some sites."

WebGL on the Mac moves to Metal

WebGL is what browser games, map sites and 3D viewers draw with, and Metal is Apple's own way to the GPU; Apple's Metal overview calls it "a modern, tightly integrated graphics and compute API coupled with a powerful shading language designed so you can take full advantage of Apple silicon." Mozilla's note promises no figure, only that the change "can improve performance on some sites," and the beta page carries Mozilla's standing warning that "Features listed here may or may not make a final release of Firefox." The final notes will say on November 10 whether it made the cut.

A speed slider, a Mini Window and Paste and Search

The Picture-in-Picture player "now has a playback speed setting, with options ranging from 0.25x to 2.0x speed," and the setting "appears only when the player window is medium-sized or larger." Mini Window "lets you move a tab or a selected part of a page into an always-on-top window while you browse"; Mozilla calls it "this early version of the feature" and asks for feedback on Mozilla Connect. The address bar's context menu shows "Paste and Search" instead of "Paste and Go" when the clipboard holds a search term rather than an address; sites that keep asking to open mailto: links in a web app get a "Never allow" button; Firefox plays Matroska (MKV) files with FLAC, MP3 or PCM audio; and the recognition side of the Web Speech API arrives, "performing on-device real-time Speech-to-text in 40 languages."

Four macOS fixes

The beta notes list four fixes that are the Mac's alone:

  • Downloaded files sometimes opened in the wrong application instead of the default one set in Finder.
  • Links opened in the background from other apps, such as RSS readers, brought Firefox to the foreground.
  • With Firefox set to ask where to save files, only the first of several simultaneous downloads showed a save dialog, and only that file was downloaded.
  • PDFs opened in Preview from the macOS print dialog get back meaningful filenames and the usual save workflow.

What ships with it and what you need

The same day brings Firefox ESR 153.7 and 115.45.0, by Mozilla's release calendar, which has 161 due November 24 and 162 due December 8, and the release schedule pencils a 160 dot release for November 17. The system requirements for the beta ask for macOS 10.15 or later on a "Macintosh computer with an Intel x86 or Apple silicon processor," 512 MB of RAM and 200 MB of disk, and the beta notes page says Firefox Beta is no longer supported on macOS 10.14 and below, which are sent to Firefox ESR instead. For developers, MDN's notes for 160 record that runtime.PlatformInfo now returns arm64 rather than aarch64 for extensions on ARM64 machines, Apple silicon Macs among them, to match Chrome. Until November 10 the current release is Firefox 159.0.1 of November 3, which fixed passkey sign-in on sites that share passkeys across related sites and carried one high-impact security fix, CVE-2026-120572; a Mac still on 159.0 should take that update rather than wait for 160.

Then and now

On November 9, 2004, Dana Baggett's item had Firefox 1.0 "Due Out in Final Today," and the bracketed update below it said the final "has worked great." Mozilla's press release of that day announced "immediate availability for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux," "over a dozen languages," and a Preview Release "that over eight million people downloaded." Our November 12, 2004 item on the AP's review could not find the switch for the phishing protection, and our October 2005 item counted 100 million downloads. Mozilla's calendar still ends its table of past releases with that row, Firefox 1.0, release day 2004-11-09, release owner Basil Hashem; 160 is the row for November 10, 2026. Twenty-two years on, the Mac still gets its own lines in the notes, and for once the first of them is about speed rather than a fix. We'll post a hands-on report after we install it.

Sources

  1. Mozilla, “Milestones and key data for Firefox 160” accessed Nov 9, 2026Mozilla release management's schedule page for Firefox 160 (wiki.mozilla.org/Release_Management/Calendar redirects to this site). Status "Release candidate about to be released."; Release Date "November 10, 2026"; Beta 1 "October 26"; "Release day! Firefox 160 ships at 14:00 UTC (6 AM PT) with an initial 25% rollout." dated November 10; "Dot release 1" November 17. Accessed November 9, 2026.
  2. Mozilla, “Firefox 160.0, See All New Features, Updates and Fixes” accessed Nov 9, 2026Heading "160.0 Firefox Release" with no date and no entries; the body reads "We're still preparing the notes for this release, and will post them here when they are ready. Please check back later." Accessed November 9, 2026.
  3. Mozilla, “Firefox Beta 160.0beta, See All New Features, Updates and Fixes” accessed Nov 9, 2026"Version 160.0beta, first offered to Beta channel users on October 26, 2026"; "Warning: Features listed here may or may not make a final release of Firefox". New: "WebGL content on macOS is now rendered using Apple's Metal graphics API, which can improve performance on some sites."; "The Picture-in-Picture player now has a playback speed setting, with options ranging from 0.25x to 2.0x speed. The setting appears only when the player window is medium-sized or larger."; "Mini Window lets you move a tab or a selected part of a page into an always-on-top window while you browse. We'd appreciate your feedback on Mozilla Connect as we develop and improve this early version of the feature."; "The address bar context menu now shows \"Paste and Search\" instead of \"Paste and Go\" when the copied text is a search term rather than a web address."; the "Never allow" button for sites that repeatedly ask to open mailto: links in a web app; "Firefox now plays Matroska (MKV) files with FLAC, MP3, or PCM audio." Fixed: downloaded files on macOS opening in the wrong application instead of the default set in Finder; links opened in the background from other apps such as RSS readers bringing Firefox to the foreground; only the first of several simultaneous downloads showing a save dialog on macOS when Firefox asks where to save, and only that file downloading; "Restored meaningful filenames and the usual save workflow for PDFs opened in Preview from the macOS print dialog." Web Platform: "The recognition side of the Web Speech API is now implemented, performing on-device real-time Speech-to-text in 40 languages". The page's one screenshot, 160_pip_playback_speed.png, is the item's picture. Accessed November 9, 2026.
  4. Apple Developer, “Metal Overview - Apple Developer” accessed Nov 9, 2026"Metal is a modern, tightly integrated graphics and compute API coupled with a powerful shading language designed so you can take full advantage of Apple silicon." Accessed November 9, 2026.
  5. Mozilla, “Firefox Release Calendar” accessed Nov 9, 2026Mozilla release management's calendar (wiki.mozilla.org/Release_Management/Calendar answers 302 to this page). Upcoming releases: 160, matching ESR "153.7 + 115.45.0", release day November 10; 161, release day November 24; 162, release day December 8. Past releases, last row: 1.0, release owner Basil Hashem, release day 2004-11-09. Accessed November 9, 2026.
  6. Mozilla, “Firefox Beta 160.0beta System Requirements — Firefox.com” accessed Nov 9, 2026Mac: Operating Systems "macOS 10.15 or later"; Recommended Hardware "Macintosh computer with an Intel x86 or Apple silicon processor", "512 MB of RAM", "200 MB hard drive space". The 160.0beta release notes page adds "Firefox Beta is no longer supported on macOS 10.14 and below. Please download Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release) to use Firefox." Accessed November 9, 2026.
  7. MDN Web Docs, “Firefox 160 release notes for developers (Beta) - Mozilla | MDN” accessed Nov 9, 2026"Firefox 160 is the current Beta version of Firefox and ships on November 10, 2026."; "runtime.PlatformInfo now returns arch as arm64 for ARM64 platforms. Previously, it returned aarch64. This aligns the value returned by Firefox for ARM64 platforms with Chrome." Page last modified November 6, 2026. Accessed November 9, 2026.
  8. Mozilla, “Firefox 159.0.1, See All New Features, Updates and Fixes” accessed Nov 9, 2026"Version 159.0.1, first offered to Release channel users on November 3, 2026"; Fixed: "Fixed passkey sign-in failing on websites that share passkeys across related sites, such as Facebook and Instagram."; "Security fix." linking to MFSA 2026-123. Accessed November 9, 2026.
  9. Mozilla, “Security Vulnerabilities fixed in Firefox 159.0.1 — Mozilla” accessed Nov 9, 2026Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory 2026-123, announced November 3, 2026, impact high, fixed in Firefox 159.0.1: "CVE-2026-120572: Incorrect boundary conditions in the Layout: Block and Inline component", impact high. Accessed November 9, 2026.
  10. Mozilla Blog, “Mozilla Foundation releases the highly anticipated Mozilla Firefox 1.0 web browser – Mozilla Press Center” accessed Nov 9, 2026Press release dated November 9, 2004, Mountain View: "the worldwide availability of the Mozilla Firefox 1.0 web browser"; "last month's highly successful Preview Release that over eight million people downloaded"; "immediate availability for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux"; "Firefox is now available in over a dozen languages". Accessed November 9, 2026.

Then and now

All pairings

Dana Baggett had Firefox 1.0 due out in final on November 9, 2004; Firefox 160 is due November 10, 2026, with WebGL on the Mac moved to Apple's Metal.

Also on November 9, other years

Every November 9 since 1997

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