Mozilla Eyes Removal Of Theora Support In Firefox

Following Google's plans for removing Theora codec format support from the Chrome/Chromium browser, Mozilla is also eyeing a similar move for retiring Theora from Firefox.

Last week a ticket was opened for investigating the removal of Theora support from Firefox. It was noted by Paul Adenot that only around 0.09% of media resource loads in Firefox are of Theora content.

Most web services have long switched away from Theora to better alternatives like VP9 and AV1. And those Theora resource loads that do happen are often legacy services or part of a list of other video source formats as well. Long story short, Theora usage in the real-world should be very minimal these days.

The plan drafted is to disable Theora support in Firefox nightly, add a bit of telemetry for tracking if any Theora load attempts happen, and wait a few Firefox release cycles before removing it during the beta phase and then go ahead in removing the Theora support from Firefox in a similar fashion to Chrome.

More details in this ticket for those interested in phasing out of Theora by Firefox.