Firefox Smart Window Adds Web Answers and Visual History Search

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Starting 18 August 2026, Mozilla’s Smart Window browsing mode in Firefox can pull answers from live web results and display source citations inside the chat panel, through a new partnership with search-API company Exa.

The update also adds two history features. A natural-language query - such as “running shoes I looked at last week” - now retrieves visual previews pulled directly from the pages a user previously visited, rather than returning fresh search results. Separately, Smart Window can suggest tab groups automatically and identify duplicate tabs for removal, cutting down on browser clutter.

Mozilla’s head of Firefox, Ajit Varma, told The Verge that the citation layer is designed to let users “check answers or find your place again,” particularly when they remember page content but not the specific URL. Beta users, according to Mozilla, said the feature helped them maintain their train of thought. Future updates will introduce Chrome-style surfacing of recent browsing journeys and AI-powered autofill for online forms, though no release dates have been given for those additions.

Smart Window remains an opt-in beta with no confirmed date for a full release, Varma said, adding there is no “precise date” yet. Users choose from four AI backends: Google Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite, OpenAI oss-gpt-120b, Alibaba Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507, or a locally run model. Firefox senior staff product manager Steve Truong stated the third-party model options are all covered by zero-data-retention contracts. Mozilla has also added an AI Controls section to Firefox settings where every AI feature can be switched off individually or all at once.

“We’re looking at making sure that there is a possibility for digital sovereignty, so you can choose local AIs and AI from companies that are maybe based in your region that have different views than maybe some of the big tech companies.”
- Ajit Varma, Mozilla head of Firefox

Practitioner takeaway: For anyone already running AI tools in a browser context, Smart Window’s zero-data-retention model contracts and local-model option make it one of the more auditable setups available in a mainstream browser today. The ability to query browsing history in plain language - rather than remembering exact URLs - has direct value for researchers and product builders who move across many tabs daily. The feature is still beta and model choice is limited to the four listed options, so teams with strict data-residency requirements should verify whether a local-model deployment fully satisfies their policies before relying on it for sensitive work.

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