Firefox on Windows 11 to adopt Windows accelerated app launches to cut link handoff latency
Mozilla is developing a change for Firefox on Windows 11 that lets an already-running browser receive links and Start menu launches faster. The work is tracked in Mozilla Bugzilla bug 2087194, which is an enhancement, not a security fix, and it is still ASSIGNED with no fix merged when the record was prepared. The article reports handoff latency dropping from about 70 ms to about 3 ms, but the bug's own search snippet gives a different gain (15% faster, up to 33% faster on a busy machine) (bugzilla.mozilla.org). The change only helps warm launches, where a Firefox instance is already running, and early builds keep it behind an experimental opt-in preference. No vulnerability, CVE, exploitation or threat actor is involved, so the risk to defenders is minimal.
Detalhes técnicos
Today Windows starts an intermediate process that finds the running instance, forwards the request and exits. Windows 11 can now let a running app ask Windows to deliver its launches directly, which Microsoft calls accelerated app launches (bugzilla.mozilla.org). Under the Firefox design, the browser registers a dedicated receiving window with the operating system, so the temporary process is no longer created. Open items are multi-profile routing, meaning which profile instance should receive a link when several run at once (article). The article also says Microsoft is contributing its Edge acceleration work to the Chromium repository, which would carry similar gains to other Chromium browsers; this is the article's claim and was not verified in a primary source.
Linha do tempo
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Firefox on Windows 11 to adopt Windows accelerated app launches to cut link handoff latency
ler a análise desta fonte ocultar
Mozilla is developing a change for Firefox on Windows 11 that lets an already-running browser receive links and Start menu launches faster. The work is tracked in Mozilla Bugzilla bug 2087194, which is an enhancement, not a security fix, and it is still ASSIGNED with no fix merged when the record was prepared. The article reports handoff latency dropping from about 70 ms to about 3 ms, but the bug's own search snippet gives a different gain (15% faster, up to 33% faster on a busy machine) (bugzilla.mozilla.org). The change only helps warm launches, where a Firefox instance is already running, and early builds keep it behind an experimental opt-in preference. No vulnerability, CVE, exploitation or threat actor is involved, so the risk to defenders is minimal.
Technical Details
Today Windows starts an intermediate process that finds the running instance, forwards the request and exits. Windows 11 can now let a running app ask Windows to deliver its launches directly, which Microsoft calls accelerated app launches (bugzilla.mozilla.org). Under the Firefox design, the browser registers a dedicated receiving window with the operating system, so the temporary process is no longer created. Open items are multi-profile routing, meaning which profile instance should receive a link when several run at once (article). The article also says Microsoft is contributing its Edge acceleration work to the Chromium repository, which would carry similar gains to other Chromium browsers; this is the article's claim and was not verified in a primary source.