Firefox Finally Gets Push Notifications

One of the most popular internet browsers is finally getting a feature that many have been waiting for. The Google Chrome web browser has had the ability to send push notifications for quite some time now and Firefox users will be delighted to find out that today their browser of choice is getting the same ability as well. It will enable websites to send push notifications to users even when they don’t have the website open, provided they agree to receive push notifications.

Firefox 44 brings support for Web Push which delivers push notifications from websites even if users don’t have that website open, only the browser needs to be running for this to work. What this means is that users can receive notifications for new emails without having to keep their email tab open.

Web Push requires explicit, revokable permission from users before a website is allowed to push notifications, quite like the webcam or geolocation access requires explicit permission. All notifications from websites are indistinguishable from native notifications.

With this update, Firefox becomes the second popular browser that features full support for push notifications, the first being Google Chrome. Other popular browsers like Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge do not support this feature yet but they may come around to it at some point in the future.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Computers
Tags: Chrome, Firefox, web browser