Firefox update brings native support for M1 Macs, WebRender in Big Sur
Mozilla says web apps are twice as responsive thanks to native M1 support
First up, Firefox now natively supports Apple Siliconh CPUs. In the update notes for version 84, Mozilla notes there are “dramatic improvements” over the non-native build that it shipped in Firefox 83. Specifically, the new native Firefox 84 launches over 2.5 times faster and web apps “are now twice as responsive (per the SpeedoMeter 2.0 test).”
It’s worth noting that upgrading to the new, native Firefox on Macs with M1 chips will require a few different steps. Mozilla has a support document available here, but in short, users will need to click the ‘Firefox’ menu and select ‘Quit Firefox’ after updating to version 84+ from an older version of the browser. Once the re-open Firefox, it should be on the new architecture (you can make sure by typing ‘about:support’ into the URL bar and checking that ‘R