Stable version of Firefox can still be downloaded just fine

May 10, 2021 13:38 GMT  ·  By

The browser world pretty much comes down to three giants right now, namely Google Chrome, which controls some 70 percent of the desktop, Microsoft Edge, already offered as the default Windows 10 browser but also offered on Linux and Mac, and Mozilla Firefox, which is seen by many as the only alternative to Chromium rivals.

So at some level, it’s not hard to figure out why Firefox diehard fans think of all kinds of malicious plots put together by Microsoft to fight against its browser rivals.

A recent error encountered when trying to download Firefox Nightly in Microsoft Edge made some redditors here believe the whole thing was intentional, even though it’s pretty clear that Smart Screen kicked and flagged the download as dangerous for totally different reasons.

As TechDows noted, the Nightly version of Firefox was the only one getting blocked in Microsoft Edge, as the stable build still downloaded just fine.

Issue most likely resolved already

So no, it’s not Microsoft blocking the download of Firefox Nightly, but Smart Screen that tries to protect users from downloading potentially dangerous software by mistakenly flagging the experimental version of Mozilla’s browser as a threat.

And most likely, this happens because Firefox Nightly is not commonly-used software, so Smart Screen just blocked it to make sure users are protected.

At the same time, it looks like the whole thing has already been resolved, as I just tried to download Firefox Nightly on my up-to-date Windows 10 system and everything is working properly. So if anything, it was just an error that Microsoft corrected pretty fast, and the impact was likely pretty low.

Needless to say, you can still download files flagged by Smart Screen by simply turning to a different browser or by just clicking the “Download unsafe file” whenever you see the warning.