The Mozilla Foundation has released a new version of Firefox today that can prevent some websites from asking to send notifications to your device, as reported by Ars Technica. In addition, this version of Firefox — release number 59 — also stops some sites from accessing your device’s camera, microphone, and location unexpectedly.

The new feature prevents your notification center from getting cluttered with piles of news stories from various sites. When turned on, all websites by default will have such requests blocked, but you can tell Firefox to accept notifications from trusted websites.

To manage your notification permissions in Firefox 59, go to options in Windows, or preferences on Mac. Then, click on “Privacy & Security” and find the section marked permissions. From here you can individually manage your permissions for location, camera, microphone, and notifications.

Other items mentioned in the Firefox 59 release notes include annotations on screenshots in the browser, different ways to customize your tabs and windows, and the following performance updates:

Faster load times for content on the Firefox Home page

Faster page load times by loading either from the networked cache or the cache on the user’s hard drive (Race Cache With Network)

Improved graphics rendering using Off-Main-Thread Painting (OMTP) for Mac users (OMTP for Windows was released in Firefox 58)

Firefox 59 is available now for all platforms.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/14/17121850/firefox-ban-news-website-pop-up-notifications-version-58-update