It's Official: Mozilla quietly tests Perplexity AI as a New Firefox Search Option—Here’s How to Try It Out Now

We saw this coming—the deal between Mozilla and Perplexity for search engine integration was anticipated when we first reported that the company aimed to promote AI-powered search in Firefox.

It’s official: Mozilla is running an experiment in Firefox 139, introducing Perplexity as one of the available search engines.

While Mozilla hasn’t made Perplexity the default search engine as part of the experiment, it will be available as an option in the address bar via the unified search button, allowing users to switch between search engines in Firefox quickly.

Mozilla claims that the AI-answering engine provides direct, conversational responses to user questions, making it especially helpful if you:

• Want quick, concise answers without sifting through multiple sources
• Are you researching or learning and need accurate, well-cited information.
• Are working on creative or technical content, such as blog posts or code snippets.

Mozilla confirms that if the experiment’s outcome is positive, they plan to support more AI-based answers or search options. This development could potentially open the floodgates for AI-focused search engines.

If you are privacy-conscious, you may want to review Perplexity’s privacy policy here. Mozilla is interested in knowing whether users prefer traditional search engines or AI-powered search solutions.

The experiment is targeted at users in the US, UK, and Germany, but users outside these regions can also try Perplexity AI search in Firefox.

How to Try Perplexity AI Search in Firefox:

1. Launch Firefox.
2. Visit Perplexity.ai.
3. While on the Perplexity site, type a query in the address bar. Without pressing Enter, select the “Search with Perplexity” option that appears below. This will perform a search on Perplexity.
4. Try searching again with a similar or different query. You will then be prompted to add Perplexity as a search engine. Click Add, and Perplexity will be integrated into Firefox. Its keyword @perplexity will also be available in the address bar dropdown for future searches.

This surprises me—Mozilla chose to announce this on the Connect forum (as we spotted) rather than on their blog.