Waterfox – the x64 Firefox for Windows

Publish Date:

Via voting on Sourceforge project of the month for Greenshot – a screenshot-utility – I discovered Waterfox.

Waterfox is a Firefox build in 64 bit, with SSE3 enabled (CPU instruction extension/improvement), for windows.

It claims to be quite a bit faster on x64 systems in comparison to official Firefox releases, dropping 32bit support (official Firefox is still only releasing 32-bit versions for Windows). The projects focus is just that: speed.

I have been using it today without issues. Have not checked the source or the like yet, on what else they change(d). The sf project page states:

  • Implementation of Intel’s Math Library
  • Implementation of SSE3 for all processors
  • Implementation of AVX for Intel Sandy Bridge and later processors

Installation went smoothly. Migration from Firefox to Waterfox was seamless, it will just use your existent profile and addons without issues or manual changes necessary.

If you are on x64 windows and use Firefox, I’d highly recommend it.