Firefox 156 desktop update stops high resolution images from hogging your RAM

Mozilla has released the Firefox 156 stable desktop build to the public. The update is available to download now, but the company has yet to release the official stable release notes.

If you don’t want to wait for the in-app update to reach your device, you can download the installer directly from Mozilla’s public FTP directory.

As we highlighted in our report on the Firefox 156 beta release, the big change with the update is around how it handles large images.

Modern websites love to upload massive high-resolution pictures and then use code to squeeze them into tiny boxes on your screen. Before v156, Firefox would unpack the entire giant file right into your computer memory before shrinking it down, chewing through RAM and CPU cycles on image-heavy pages.

Now, the browser downscales those pictures while it decodes them. Mozilla notes that the new process brings “improved memory and CPU usage when Firefox displays large JPEG images scaled down to fit a page.”

Another performance boost comes from changes to the built-in PDF reader. Mozilla says the “built-in PDF viewer now starts up to 45% faster” because it preps background processes much earlier instead of waiting for you to click.

Meanwhile, Firefox users on Mac are also getting a nifty option to launch the browser automatically whenever the device boots up.

Mozilla has also fixed a bunch of other bugs that you can check out in the full changelog we’ve added below.

What’s not mentioned in the changelog is the ongoing refinement of Firefox’s Nova redesign. This release brings some slight tweaks, along with a new Compact Mode that shrinks the browser’s frame. So you have more screen real estate to work with.

Keep in mind that the Nova redesign is still hidden behind the advanced configuration menu. So you’ll have to manually toggle it on by going to about:config and setting browser.nova.enabled to true.

This update follows the previous Firefox 155 release, which brought sleep and container fixes along with expanded access to Smart Window.

Over on iOS, version 156 is rolling out through the App Store with quick tools to report broken pages, but nothing fundamentally new landed on Apple devices this round.

As for Firefox on Android, the v156 update brings a built-in VPN and reworked media playback, which we are breaking down in a separate story. So stay tuned for that.

The in-app update for Firefox 156 should be live in a few hours from now if you don’t see it already.

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