Mozilla announced on January 15, 2019 that it was closing Firefox Test Pilot, the program that let Firefox users try experimental features before they were ready for everyone. The program was set to shut down on January 22, 2019. Mozilla said it was moving to a new structure in which experimentation would happen across the whole Firefox organisation instead of in one program.
What Test Pilot was
Test Pilot gave Mozilla’s most enthusiastic users early prototypes and product ideas that were not ready for a wide release. In return, those users gave feedback, and the projects were polished into features. In Mozilla’s words, the program let it “iterate quickly, try daring new things, and build products that our users have been excited to embrace”.
Features that graduated from Test Pilot
- Activity Stream, the Firefox home page with recent and recommended content, was in the first round of experiments.
- Containers paved the way for the Facebook Container extension.
- Send made private, encrypted file sharing as easy as clicking a button.
- Lockbox took Firefox passwords to iOS devices, with Android planned.
- Page Shot became the built-in Screenshots feature.
- Mozilla’s new approach to anti-tracking also first gained traction as a Test Pilot experiment.
What happens to your experiments
Mozilla said it would not uninstall any experiments people were using. Many Test Pilot experiments and features were headed to addons.mozilla.org, while Send and Lockbox would keep taking user input as they became standalone products. If you used Test Pilot, you did not need to do anything. To review what is installed, open the menu and select Add-ons, or type about:addons in the address bar.
Why Mozilla closed it
Mozilla said Test Pilot “performed better than we could have ever imagined”. Instead of one team running experiments, it wanted the whole Firefox organisation to test ideas with small groups and learn from rapid iteration. It also said it would not be running fewer experiments, but more.
Test Pilot came back
The closure did not last. On September 10, 2019, Mozilla relaunched Test Pilot with a beta of Firefox Private Network. The new program was aimed at Firefox account holders who opted in to hear about new products. Mozilla said its products could now sit outside the browser and would be “far more polished, and just one step shy of general public release”.
Firefox’s own privacy features have since grown into Enhanced Tracking Protection, and its password manager is built in. If you are setting up a new browser, our password manager comparison covers Firefox’s options alongside dedicated tools, and the about:config guide shows how to try settings Mozilla has not switched on yet.
