Firefox's shake to summarize feature is now available on android

Quick Summary
Firefox 150 brings the Shake to Summarize feature to Android — tap, shake, or use the menu to instantly get the key points of any webpage. Previously an iOS-only feature recognized by TIME as one of the best inventions of 2025, it now reaches Android users with the same on-device or server-side AI summarization. The only current limitation English content only.
Have you ever opened a 3,000-word article on your phone and instantly debated whether to read it or just leave? Mozilla has an answer: shake your phone. The "Shake to Summarize" feature — named one of TIME's best inventions of 2025 — has officially launched on Android alongside Firefox 150.
What is Shake to Summarize and how does it work?
Shake to Summarize is an AI feature built directly into Firefox that lets users get an instant summary of any webpage without leaving the browser or opening another app.
There are three ways to trigger it:
- Shake your phone while viewing a page
- Tap the lightning bolt icon in the address bar
- Go to the three-dot menu → Summarize Page
Within seconds, Firefox opens a small panel displaying the key points of the page. What makes it stand out is how the summary adapts to content type — recipes get the actionable steps, sports articles focus on scores and stats, and news pieces highlight the key developments.
The journey from iOS to Android
Shake to Summarize first launched on iOS in September 2025, initially available only to US users in English. The response was strong enough that Mozilla received a special mention in TIME Best Inventions 2025 — a recognition rarely given to a browser feature.
The Android version went through careful testing on Firefox Nightly before making it into the official Firefox 150 release in April 2026. Prior to that, trying it on Android required going to Settings → About Firefox Nightly → tapping the logo three times to enter "Secret Settings" and manually enabling it — a process clearly meant for technical users only.

What AI powers this feature?
Mozilla doesn't use a single model — it splits the work by device:
- On iPhone 15 Pro and later running iOS 26+, summaries are generated entirely on-device via Apple Intelligence, meaning data never leaves the phone.
- On all other devices, page content is sent to Mozilla's AI servers, processed, and returned to the user.
On Mozilla's end, the engineering team tested several models — including Mistral Nemo, Mistral Small, Jamba 1.5 Mini, Gemini Flash 2.0, and Llama 4 Maverick — before settling on Mistral Small as the primary model. The reasoning: Mistral Small has open weights, fast inference, and significantly lower cost compared to alternatives, while still delivering high-quality summaries.
What if users don't want AI?
This is where Mozilla handled things fairly well. After facing pushback from long-time users concerned that Firefox was abandoning its core privacy values, Mozilla added a setting to disable all AI features entirely.
On desktop, a "Block AI enhancements" option lets users turn off all current and future AI features, or selectively keep specific ones. On Android, Shake to Summarize is tied to the new AI Controls panel — when AI is turned off, both the shake gesture and the summarize button are disabled simultaneously.
What else is new in Firefox 150?
Alongside Shake to Summarize on Android, Firefox 150 brings several other noteworthy updates:
- Open links in split view to browse two pages side by side
- Copy URLs from multiple tabs at once
- Real-time private translation on a dedicated translation page
- Free built-in VPN now expanded to Canada (previously limited to select markets)
- A new profile management system for all users
Firefox 151 is expected on May 19, 2026 and may continue expanding AI Controls on mobile.
Real-world assessment
Shake to Summarize addresses a genuinely real problem: skimming on a phone is uncomfortable, but reading in full takes too long. Rather than asking users to open yet another AI app, Mozilla embeds summarization directly into the browsing flow — the shake gesture may look playful, but it's actually the fastest shortcut imaginable on mobile.
The biggest limitation right now is the English-only restriction, which significantly reduces its value for non-English speakers. But if Mozilla continues its language expansion roadmap — as it has done with its translation feature — this could become one of the most compelling reasons to return to Firefox on mobile.



