Firefox 47 Brings Synced Tabs Sidebar, Improved YouTube Playback, and More

Firefox has released an upgrade for its desktop and Android browsers, introducing additional utilities. The new Firefox 47 brings a 'Synced Tabs Sidebar' that allows you to skim through open tabs on iOS, Android, and the Web simultaneously.

The desktop version, for Linux, OS X, and Windows, gets a new Synced Tabs feature. This allows users to access tabs that remain open in their Android and iOS devices. If users are signed-in on their Android and iOS apps, the Synced Tab Sidebar on the left will collate all the tabs and show them in a list format.

To use Synced Tabs, users can just click on the menu button on the top right of the browser, and select the Synced Tab option. Once you click on the 'View Synced Tabs Sidebar' option, the sidebar shows up on the left side of the browser, with tabs from all the devices that have Firefox installed with the same sign-in.

Firefox 47 also improves video playback on YouTube on certain laptops with powerful multiprocessors. It uses less bandwidth, and improves battery life on laptops. The new version supports VP9 video codec, which provides higher quality video resolution with an average bandwidth reduction of 35 percent. The entire changelog is detailed here.

On the Android app, it brought the ability to hide Web fonts. Web fonts essentially slow a site's load time eating up more data. Hiding web fonts may reduce the amount of data required for browsing.

The previous version Firefox 46 was released in April, and brought along security improvements and fixes. For Android users, it introduced better user notifications and clearer homescreen shortcut icons.

The new version can be downloaded on Firefox website, and app users will get an OTA update in Google Play gradually.