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3 awesome features coming to Firefox that you can get right now

The upcoming Firefox 59 will help you stop sites from asking for permission to send you notifications and know your location, but you can stop these right now in the current build of Firefox with a little digging.

Matt Elliott Senior Editor
Matt Elliott is a senior editor at CNET with a focus on laptops and streaming services. Matt has more than 20 years of experience testing and reviewing laptops. He has worked for CNET in New York and San Francisco and now lives in New Hampshire. When he's not writing about laptops, Matt likes to play and watch sports. He loves to play tennis and hates the number of streaming services he has to subscribe to in order to watch the various sports he wants to watch.
Expertise Laptops, desktops, all-in-one PCs, streaming devices, streaming platforms
Matt Elliott
2 min read
Firefox Quantum sports a simpler logo than earlier versions of Mozilla's browser.
Mozilla

When Firefox 59 is released in March, it will add controls for setting permissions for how the browser accesses your location along with your computer's camera and microphone. It will also include a global setting for blocking sites from asking to be allowed to send you notifications.

These settings will be most welcomed -- particularly the ability to shut off those annoying requests that sites pop up asking if it's OK to send you notifications -- but you can access those if you are willing to dip into Firefox's advanced settings in about:config.

1. Disable notification requests

Have you ever answered "Allow" when a site asks if it can send you notifications? I have not. If you have grown tired of repeatedly answering "Block" to this question, there is a way to prevent sites from even asking.

Enter about:config in Firefox's address bar and click the I accept the risk button. Search for dom.push.enabled and double-click it to switch its value from true to false.

firefox-push-notifications
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

2. Disable location requests

Many sites also ask for your location, which might be helpful for some types of sites (weather, mapping and so on) but certainly not for all that ask. If you want to disable all sites from requesting to know your location, go to about:config, search for geo.enabled and set its value to false.

3. Disable camera and microphone requests

You probably get fewer requests from sites asking to use your computer's webcam and microphone, but you can shut off these requests in about:config, too. Find media.navigator.enabled and media.peerconnection.enabled and set the values to both to false.

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