Mercury Browser AVX1

Mercury Browser AVX1 129.0.2

Firefox fork with compiler optimizations and patches from Librewolf, Waterfox, and GNU IceCat.

Download for Windows

About Mercury Browser AVX1

Firefox fork with compiler optimizations and patches from Librewolf, Waterfox, and Ghostery.
It aims to be the Firefox equivalent of my main project:Thorium (a Chromium fork).

What's new in 129.0.2

  • Finally updated it, plz don't hate me I know ya'll been waiting
  • Builds for ALL DA OSES!
  • Incorporated some compiler flags from Zen browser, AND, made some commits to Zen as well to add some of Mercury's AVX2 stuff. See > zen-browser/desktop#1216 Thanks to the author for talking to me on Reddit and then accepting my pull request.
  • Disabled "Normandy", a component that allows Mozilla to alter extension configurations at will remotely. (bleh wtf is that)
  • Enabled JS_SHELL, for devs looking to use extensions like https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/scratchpad/ to get a semblance of that functionality that they removed.
  • Tabstrip functionality of Firefox View is enabled, without actually enabling firefox view due to it's other bad stuff we don't want (You can still manually enable it in about:config, then re-add it to the tabstrip with the buttons editor).
  • MacOS builds lack PGO, since I had to cross-compile them. May reduce performance.
  • NOTE: For those looking to build for themselves, cross compiling for MacOS is now broken since Apple complained about Mozilla redistributing the XCode SDK (of course 🙄). The workaround involves a lengthy process to package up the SDK from a Mac, then copy it to your Linux machine. It's outside the scope of these release notes, but I may add instructions to the //docs folder at a later date.UI Update: Next release will have some UI patches from Floorp, a popular Firefox fork. However, remember that Mercury doesn't attempt to heavily modify the UI from upstream Firefox, so don't expect Mercury to end up being a compiler optimized Floorp. I promise there won't be a freakin months long delay in updating. But I also tend to put Thorium and Codium first over my other projects. One man can only do so much, even with as often as I am on the computer doing nerd stuff.

Full release notes »

Technical details

PublisherAlex313031
Version129.0.2
Release date2024-09-17
LicenseMPL-2.0
Installer typeexe
Architecturex64
Package IDAlex313031.Mercury

Install Mercury Browser AVX1 from the command line

Install with Windows Package Manager
winget install --id=Alex313031.Mercury -e
Update to the latest version
winget upgrade --id=Alex313031.Mercury -e
Uninstall
winget uninstall --id=Alex313031.Mercury -e
Silent install with the offline installer
"mercury_129.0.2_win64_AVX_installer.exe" /S

web-browserwebbrowsermercury-browsermercurybrowseravx-instructionscompiler-optimizationfirefoxfirefox-forkfirefox-forkingmercuryprivacy

Mercury Browser AVX1 version history

123.0.1 Mar 6, 2024
  • MERCURY_PORTABLE binaries in the Linux .zips now work properly
  • Enabled a new form of LTO: "cross thinLTO". This performs link time optimization across languages, namely Rust and C++ (Firefox uses alot of Rust compared to Chromium, especially in the Gecko rendering engine). It will stay enabled on Linux. On Windows, the default is FullLTO (rather than thinLTO, or cross thinLTO), so if performance is less than the default FullLTO, then I will revert it.
  • – Similarly, next release will enable a new experimental "cross PGO", which does the same thing as above, just for PGO rather than LTO.
  • Completely disabled Pocket. (I thought I had fully disabled it before, but after noticing it was still pinging api.pocket.com, I took a patch from IceCat, and disabled fetching from the endpoint (the server endpoint is set to null). Speaking of IceCat, I'm making some experimental Linux builds using the optimizations of Mercury here > since only Arch and Guix provide binaries anymore.
  • Mozilla introduced more telemetry, so I promptly disabled that, lol.
  • PGO is more effective by using a new LLVM flag (that Chromium, and consequently Thorium will also be using soon) called "-mllvm, -pgo-temporal-instrumentation"
  • MacOS 10.15 is the new minimum supported MacOS version.
  • Some libraries are compiled with AVX512 in the AVX and AVX2 versions, and it will select which codepath to use by detecting your CPU's capabilities at runtime. …
122.0.2 Feb 8, 2024
  • More SIMD compiler optimizations
  • Fixed windows manifest
  • Removed annoying stuff in the Windows installer
  • Added mime type handling to the .deb
  • Added document .icns for MacOS
  • Added Raspberry Pi builds! While this will work on any arm64 computer, it is specifically tuned for the Cortex-A76 processor in the Raspi 4.
  • Added SSE3, SSE4, AVX, and AVX2 builds for both Windows and Linux.
  • Converted the portable .sh into an actual binary. Simply unpack the linux .zip(s), and run MERCURY_PORTABLE
  • NOTE: The MacOS version is NOT 122.0.2. It is based on Tip-of-Tree since there are continuous issues building the stable, or "release" branch. The real version is 124.0a1. Treat it as a beta, although we have been using it with no problems. Once the stable release branch is updated to 124.x.x, then it will follow suit with the rest of the others. Mozilla is aware of the linker bugs, so we just have to wait.UPDATE: The MERCURY_PORTABLE binaries in the .zips are broken. I fixed it, and uploaded the file here. Please download that and replace the one in the .zip after you have extracted it.UPDATE 2: Added arm64 MacOS binaries.
121.0.2 Jan 10, 2024
  • Same release notes as below
  • They simply updated to 121.0.2 between the time when I made the Linux release and now.
  • For Linux, download 121.0.1 here >
  • Again, SSE3 builds are provided for people with CPUs that lack AVX.

Other versions

  • 115.4.0

Frequently asked questions

Is Mercury Browser AVX1 free?

Yes. Mercury Browser AVX1 is free and open-source software released under the MPL-2.0 license.

What is the latest version of Mercury Browser AVX1?

The latest version is 129.0.2, released on Sep 17, 2024.

Is it safe to download Mercury Browser AVX1?

The download button links to the official installer published on github.com, the same file Windows Package Manager installs. You can verify the downloaded file by comparing its SHA-256 checksum with 6badbf4ffa56af3de0eee7ea60b6c5eab2468fce3524859975ca2b5f5196fdec.

Which Windows versions does Mercury Browser AVX1 support?

Mercury Browser AVX1 runs on Windows and is available for 64-bit (x64) systems.

How do I install Mercury Browser AVX1 silently?

Run the offline installer with "mercury_129.0.2_win64_AVX_installer.exe" /S, or install it with Windows Package Manager: winget install --id=Alex313031.Mercury -e --silent.

How do I uninstall Mercury Browser AVX1?

Open Settings › Apps › Installed apps, find Mercury Browser AVX1 and select Uninstall. From the command line, run winget uninstall --id=Alex313031.Mercury -e.