Title: Firefox 161 Moves to the Public Beta Channel for Testing
Summary: Firefox 161 has entered public beta testing; its desktop release is a light one on features, headlined by a new keyboard shortcut (assigned under Settings → “Customize keyboard shortcuts”) that copies the current tab’s URL. It also promises improved support for WebRTC video calls with servers that have sent low-resolution H.264 video since Firefox 158, and a fix for tabs that stop restoring after a restart when the saved session references a tab group that no longer exists. Imported Google Chrome history now carries visit-frequency data, so pages you keep returning to surface higher in the address bar and in shortcut suggestions; and typing with an input method (Japanese, Korean) no longer stops after the first character on Canva Docs. On Android, Firefox 161 fixes support for web pages that request landscape orientation being saved as shrunken portrait pages when printed or saved as PDF, and its backdrop-filter rendering performance on certain devices gets a significant improvement; on macOS there are better keyboard shortcut assignments for Firefox menu items in System Settings and improved support for macOS 26 and later when opening Spotlight with a large number of bookmarks. For web developers, it brings nested substitution functions inside the primary args of var(), attr() and env(), the random() CSS function, and an improved eyedropper in Developer Tools. Final builds of Firefox 161 are expected on November 24, 2026 alongside the Firefox 153.8 and 115.46.0 ESR releases. Until then, the 161 beta is available through Mozilla’s official channels — and it is not for production use.
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