What can I switch to on Windows 7 now that Firefox is unsupported?

Windows 7 is ancient. Not that ancient, but for a lot of old computers pre-Pentium 4, Windows 7 is the newest OS they can run, so what can Windows 7 still run?

Windows 7. An operating system loved by many after the failure of Windows Vista in 2007. About 2 weeks ago, Mozilla cut off support for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 operating systems, meaning that there’s no option right?

The short answer: basically nothing if you don’t want to sacrifice a few things.

But let’s actually look at the popular browsers, and see what’s the latest version you can run before going onto the obscure ones that you have to use if you still want support (and even then they update very infrequently).

When did certain popular browsers stop supporting 7 and 8.1?

Google Chrome

Let’s start with the browser I never use, Chrome. From what I can tell, Google stopped supporting Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 on January 10th 2023, the same date that Windows 8.1 stopped receiving security updates from Microsoft. This means that Chrome 109 is the latest version that they can run. From the information provided on Google’s support page, if you’re on Windows Server 2012, you should still be receiving important security updates until October 10th 2023.

If you want to download Chrome 109, there’s a button at the bottom of the Chrome website stating ‘other platforms’. You should then be greeted to a menu like this, which should hopefully install Chrome 109 with no issues.

Microsoft Edge

Ah yes, the thing Microsoft decided to install on your old Windows 7 and 8 computers through an update. Thanks a lot. For Edge, unfortunately the fate is basically exactly the same as Chrome. Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 stopped receiving updates on January 10th 2023, the same as Chrome. For Server 2012 and Server 2012 R2, Microsoft is also offering security updates until October 10th 2023. The latest version for Edge for these operating systems is Edge 109.

If you want to download Edge 109, you can go to Microsoft’s website, and hopefully, it should automatically show you a button to download for Windows 7/8.1. If not, there’s a dropdown you can access for it.

Opera

Opera has become more popular than it was before lately, thanks to their gaming orientated browser, Opera GX, and adding AI features into the main browser. According to Opera’s blog, the latest version of Opera you can run is Opera 95, which you can download from browsing Opera’s extensive archives of every version since Opera 15.

Firefox

So, here’s the last of the major browsers, Mozilla Firefox. Like last time with the Windows XP/Vista discontinuation, Mozilla decided to do slightly longer than Google with Chromium. The latest version of Firefox that you can run on Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 is Firefox 115. Unlike the other browsers, Firefox is committed to providing security updates for a year longer than the other browsers, until September 2024. If you want to download Firefox, navigate to the website and adjust the first dropdown to ‘Firefox Extended Support Release’, and adjust the next dropdown that appears to 115.0.2esr. Adjust the following two dropdowns according to your needs.

What browsers should I try with these no longer supporting Windows 7?

I was going to suggest K-Meleon initially which gets updated every week, but then I took a proper look at it on a Windows XP virtual machine (since K-Meleon still supports XP), and it is probably actually more outdated in some areas than Firefox 52 (which was the newest version available for XP). I’m unsure whether Pale Moon will still support it for the time being (I couldn’t find any particularly useful requirements on their site apart from the SSE2 requirement, which if your computer supports that, you can probably upgrade to Windows 10 anyways (SSE2 is a requirement for Windows 8.x, so it doesn’t really matter there). Instead, you can perhaps try Seamonkey which doesn’t look like it has ended support for 7 yet.

I apologise that I couldn’t be of more help here, but hopefully it’ll get you going.

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