LibreWolf

What LibreWolf is

LibreWolf is a community fork of Firefox distributed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0 (https://librewolf.net/license-disclaimers/) and compiled from source by the project rather than by Mozilla. The browser keeps Firefox's engine, extension compatibility and developer tools, then changes the defaults: telemetry and crash reporting are removed, studies and sponsored content are gone, uBlock Origin ships as a bundled extension, search defaults to privacy-respecting engines, and resist fingerprinting is enabled so the browser reports a common, generic profile instead of a unique one. Cookies and site data are cleared when the browser closes unless you add exceptions.

How you use it day to day

For ordinary browsing the experience is Firefox, one version behind the newest Mozilla release and usually tracking the current stable. The difference shows up in the friction: because there is no auto-updater, you download and run a new installer yourself, and because resist fingerprinting is on, sites that rely on canvas or precise window measurements may render differently until you allow them. Add-ons install from addons.mozilla.org exactly as in Firefox, and the profile is a normal Firefox profile folder, so you can copy bookmarks and passwords across with Firefox Sync if you want to keep them in step manually.

Settings and limits worth knowing

The projects ships its hardening as configuration files rather than as a patched interface, so the changes are inspectable: a librewolf.cfg sets the defaults and a policies.json file blocks features such as telemetry endpoints. You can override individual preferences in user.js or through about:config, but a profile reset reapplies the hardened defaults, which is the point. The Windows build is a 64-bit setup executable, there is no portable or 32-bit variant, and updates must be repeated manually on every machine. Because the project has no funding from a browser vendor, release timing depends on volunteer builds, so a fresh Firefox security fix may reach Chrome and Firefox before it reaches LibreWolf.

Who should choose something else

Pick stock Firefox if you want automatic updates and a wider support net, or if you rely on DRM-protected streaming services that the default configuration makes awkward. Pick Chrome or Edge when a specific enterprise or banking site refuses anything unusual. Choose a normal browser too if you would rather not think about updates at all, because LibreWolf expects you to run the installer again every few weeks. If you accept that duty, you get Firefox's engine with a privacy posture that normally takes an hour of about:config work to reproduce.