Mozilla has updated Firefox Smart Window, its AI-assisted browsing feature, with two new capabilities that position the browser as a productivity tool rather than just a passive content consumer. The latest version adds AI-powered form filling based on tabs the user opens and a page monitoring system that notifies about specific changes on tracked websites.
Form filling is the more immediately useful of the two features. When a user clicks on a text field — say, a work history section in a job application form — Smart Window can now analyze pages the user has selected and suggest what to fill in. The feature, called "Fill from sources," allows Firefox to read your online portfolio or LinkedIn profile to extract relevant information and auto-fill it. Mozilla emphasizes that traditional autofill still works for basic data like name and address, which are stored locally on the device without any involvement from AI models. The new AI functionality complements this for more complex information, such as job descriptions, career objectives, or responses to open-ended questions like "Describe a time you resolved a conflict."
Behind the feature, Mozilla uses the Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite model, the same one used by free ChatGPT, to detect form fields and extract information from selected tabs. It's an interesting choice: not the most powerful model available, but one that balances quality with response speed, which is crucial for a feature that needs to work in real time as you browse. Users can review and edit suggestions before submitting — Firefox doesn't auto-submit forms, which is an important security distinction. Form data, selected tabs, and context are sent as input to the Gemini model, and the model returns suggestions that the user approves.
The second feature — page monitoring — is more ambitious and more limited. Users can create tasks that track specific pages for changes matching a prompt. For example, a recruiter could set up a task to monitor job listings on a job board, or a shopper could monitor deals on an online store. Firefox checks for updates daily or weekly, depending on the setting chosen, but only when the browser is open. The AI model behind this function is Qwen, developed by Alibaba — a choice that reflects Mozilla's strategy of diversifying the AI models used in its ecosystem, which in a geopolitical context of trade restrictions is not just a technical decision but a strategic one.
Users can have up to 15 active tasks simultaneously, and each task can monitor up to five pages. If no matching change is detected for 60 days, Firefox automatically pauses the task; after 90 days without changes, monitoring is discontinued. Notifications appear through the Tasks button in the browser toolbar and can also be sent as desktop notifications. Users can edit, pause, or delete tasks at any time.
Smart Window itself is not a brand-new feature. It was introduced with Firefox 143 in January 2026 as an alternative to Microsoft's Copilot and Google's Gemini, offering an AI assistant integrated into the browser that can answer questions, summarize pages, and in earlier versions help fill basic information in forms. Since then, Mozilla has gradually expanded its capabilities: support for multiple models, persistent tab integration, and now these two features that try to take Smart Window beyond the side conversation and into the browser's actual workflow.
What differentiates this update from similar features on competitors — such as Microsoft Copilot integrated into Edge, which also offers form autofilling and page monitoring — is Mozilla's privacy model. While Microsoft sends all browsing history to OpenAI's servers and Google processes everything within its own account ecosystem, Firefox Smart Window operates more granularly: only tabs explicitly selected by the user are analyzed, form data is processed locally when possible, and users have full control over what gets sent to the cloud. Mozilla also lets users choose which AI model they want to use for chat — including open-source options — which no other major browser offers.
The update also comes with Firefox 158, which includes support for the JPEG XL image format, a PDF rendering improvement for complex documents, and the patching of 77 security flaws — 30 classified as high-risk, with 24 capable of allowing remote code execution. These fixes are not novel in themselves; Firefox's security cycle is one of the most robust in the market. But the combination of AI features with a rigorous security commitment is what tries to define Mozilla's proposal at this moment: being the browser that understands that artificial intelligence does not need to mean mass data surveillance.
The form filling feature is now available in English in the United States and Canada, while page monitoring is in beta and will follow the same rollout schedule. Mozilla plans to expand to other markets in the coming months. What makes this update relevant goes beyond the features themselves: it's a signal that browsers are evolving into productivity platforms — and that Mozilla, historically more concerned with privacy than with features, is trying to compete on the same ground that Microsoft and Google already dominate.
Sources: Mozilla Blog, The Verge, PCWorld
✓ Independent sources cross-checked and verified before publishing
