Firefox 76 and 76.0.1

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes.

Announced on May 5, Firefox 76 tightens up password management and related security in several ways:

  • Lockwise, the password manager built into Firefox, now prompts for your Lockwise master password when you try to show or copy a password. If you’re not using a master password, Lockwise will prompt for your device’s password. Previously, Lockwise only prompted for the master password once, on Firefox startup.
  • Firefox now checks all your saved passwords against records from known breaches. Any password known to have been revealed in any breach will show in your Logins & Passwords list with a special icon. A different icon is shown if the associated site was breached since you last changed your password for that site.
  • Firefox can now generate secure, complex passwords for you.

Other changes in Firefox 76 include improvements to the Picture-In-Picture feature, and native support for more complex audio applications, including Zoom. There are also some minor cosmetic tweaks to the address bar and bookmarks bar.

There are eleven security fixes in Firefox 76 as well.

Default installations of Firefox keep themselves up to date, but you can hurry the process along by navigating its ‘hamburger’ menu to Help > About Firefox.

Firefox 76.0.1

The release of Firefox 76 was followed up quickly by Firefox 76.0.1, which fixes two bugs, neither of which are security-related.

About jrivett

Jeff Rivett has worked with and written about computers since the early 1980s. His first computer was an Apple II+, built by his father and heavily customized. Jeff's writing appeared in Computist Magazine in the 1980s, and he created and sold a game utility (Ultimaker 2, reviewed in the December 1983 Washington Apple Pi Journal) to international markets during the same period. Proceeds from writing, software sales, and contract programming gigs paid his way through university, earning him a Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) degree at UWO. Jeff went on to work as a programmer, sysadmin, and manager in various industries. There's more on the About page, and on the Jeff Rivett Consulting site.

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