Windows 7 has been out of Microsoft support for years, but the OS still clings to life on a slice of machines worldwide. According to StatCounter, Windows 7 still accounts for about 1.05 percent of all Windows installations. That small user base is about to lose the last mainstream browser that still supports the platform.
Why Firefox is pulling the plug
Microsoft wound down Windows 7 support in stages: mainstream support ended in 2015, extended support ended in 2020, and paid extended support for businesses wrapped up in 2023. Once official support stopped, the OS no longer received security patches for new threats, and new drivers and apps stopped being released for it.
Firefox was the last major browser standing
Chromium-based browsers largely abandoned Windows 7 in 2023, leaving Mozilla Firefox as the last relatively up-to-date gateway to the web on that OS. Mozilla has now confirmed that Firefox 115 from the ESR channel will be the final release for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1.
What this means for users
Security updates for Firefox on these older Windows versions will stop at the end of this month. Starting in March, Firefox on Windows 7 will receive no further official updates or fixes. That leaves users browsing from the unsupported OS exposed to new vulnerabilities that will no longer be patched.
Why did Mozilla delay the move?
Mozilla originally planned to end Firefox support for Windows 7 in September 2024, but postponed that cutoff twice. The organization maintained support as long as the user base justified the cost. In recent years that base has shrunk while the number of unpatched vulnerabilities on an unsupported OS has grown, making continued support costly and risky.
Mozilla’s recommendation
Mozilla urges people still on Windows 7 to upgrade to a modern operating system, either a newer Windows release or a Linux distribution. Most Linux distros ship with Firefox set as the default browser.
