Summary: Firefox 153 reaches the Release channel with Vulkan video decoding and experimental JPEG XL support in Firefox Labs. Vulkan moves video decoding to the GPU where supported, while JPEG XL remains behind an official toggle. The release also makes local-file permissions for extensions and Local Network Access consent default behaviors.
Firefox 153 is now reaching Release-channel users. Two items topped Phoronix’s report of July 20: JPEG XL support, and Vulkan video decoding. The latter puts the GPU in charge of decoding video; the former lifts an image format out of years of waiting in the browser world and into a stable build — behind an experimental toggle, at least. Neither alters tomorrow’s plans, yet together they amount to two quiet shifts in what a cross-platform browser asks of the machine under it.
Video Decoding Moves to the GPU
Decoding stops being CPU work and becomes the graphics card’s job. Wherever the platform offers Vulkan Video, that means less processor load and lower power draw while a video plays, more time between charges for a laptop, and no more stuttering on high-resolution streams from machines toward the low end. The effect shows most on Linux — the very beat Phoronix has covered for years. Multimedia work keeps migrating into hardware across browsers, a direction the Chrome family shares; what Firefox chooses is the open path, Vulkan rather than one vendor’s media APIs, which counts for the many Linux desktops now on AMD or Intel GPUs.
JPEG XL Comes Aboard at Last
Firefox Labs is where Mozilla has placed JPEG XL: compression better than WebP, JPEG, PNG, and GIF, switched on from the Firefox Labs section of Settings — or by typing “labs” into the address bar. A cautious home: an official switch in a stable release, not something on by default. Mainstream browsers have turned this format away more than once, so reaching this stage is genuine movement, and it reopens the calculus for the CDN and imaging-tool vendors that shelved their JPEG XL work the moment browser support fell apart. The contest to succeed WebP for static images now carries a new variable.
Two Permission Changes That Ship On by Default
The next two changes land on developers harder. Extensions lose their default reach into local files, replaced by a permission named “Access local files on your computer” — one extra consent step for anything doing tooling work. Local Network Access restrictions, meanwhile, now come on by default, so a site must ask before it connects to devices or services on the user’s local network. That closes a genuine hole: no page should be free to probe routers, printers, or localhost services in silence. The flip side is that Web apps speaking straight to a localhost API will meet the consent flow, and that belongs in their documentation today rather than the day the support tickets land.
A Few Other Things Worth Noticing
The rest of the batch is respectable. Windows gains HDR video playback, on displays able to show it. Several files can now be merged in the PDF editor, and images can be dropped in as fresh pages. A tab’s right-click menu generates a QR code, with the same shortcut available from the address bar on macOS. The address bar also answers to “pick color”, “color picker”, or “eyedropper”, calling up an eyedropper that samples colors off any page. QWAC certificates are now verified and shown under eIDAS rules, and the location permission icon turns red while a site holds location access. Model choice arrives in Smart Window, the built-in assistant; a new tab address bar is reaching users progressively; and videos carrying overlay controls respond better to the context menu. The beta cycle’s web-platform work shipped as well: popover=hint, the new alignment-baseline keywords, Error.stackTraceLimit, partial ::-webkit-scrollbar support, and WebRTC in MediaCapabilities queries.
What This Means for Web Developers
Three takeaways. JPEG XL stays experimental, so JXL-only assets are premature — format detection and a fallback path, however, can be sketched out now, and image-heavy products should model what JXL-sized savings would mean at their volume. The default-on prompt for local network access reaches every web app built on localhost APIs, so the consent story has to reach development flows and docs before the bug reports arrive. And Local Mode, the new developer option, points local directories at custom origins, which takes the local web server out of plain static testing — small, and a convenience whose saved friction adds up daily.