What happened?
Hi Alex and team,
First off, thank you for continuing to maintain Waterfox — it’s one of the few browsers that still respects user choice and performance on Linux.
However, I’ve noticed a serious regression since version 6.6.x: media playback using AAC and H.264 no longer works on Linux systems.
It used to work perfectly in 6.5.x, but after the 6.6.x rebuild, about:support now reports both “AAC: Unsupported” and “H.264: Unsupported”.
This means that sites like TV2 Play, Bitmovin demos, and various news portals no longer have sound or video, even though YouTube (Opus/Vorbis) still works fine.
🧩 Technical details
- In 6.5.x, Waterfox properly detected and used the system’s FFmpeg libraries for decoding AAC and H.264.
- In 6.6.x, that integration appears to have been removed (likely due to build-system or ESR toolchain changes).
- Setting
media.libavcodec.allow-obsolete or adjusting LD_LIBRARY_PATH no longer makes a difference.
- FFmpeg (
libavcodec.so.62) is installed system-wide and works fine with Firefox and LibreWolf.
⚙️ Expected behavior
Waterfox should detect and use system FFmpeg libraries on Linux, as Firefox and LibreWolf do.
This ensures support for AAC/H.264 playback without bundling proprietary codecs directly.
🧪 Environment
- OS: Arch Linux (fully up to date)
- Waterfox build: 6.6.4 (AUR / binary)
- FFmpeg installed: yes (
/usr/lib/libavcodec.so.62)
- DRM: enabled (Widevine functional)
- about:support: AAC/H.264 = Unsupported
🔁 Steps to reproduce
- Visit https://bitmovin.com/demos/drm
- Observe: video plays, but no sound
- Open
about:support → “AAC: Unsupported”
✅ Suggested fix
Please restore or re-enable system FFmpeg integration (--enable-ffmpeg) in the Linux builds.
If licensing concerns are the reason it was disabled, perhaps offer a “Full Codec” Linux build for users who already have FFmpeg installed system-wide.
This small change would restore full functionality for legitimate streaming services and align Waterfox with how Firefox handles codec support.
Thank you for considering this!
Reproducible?
Version
6.6.4-1
What platform are you seeing the problem on?
Linux
What happened?
Hi Alex and team,
First off, thank you for continuing to maintain Waterfox — it’s one of the few browsers that still respects user choice and performance on Linux.
However, I’ve noticed a serious regression since version 6.6.x: media playback using AAC and H.264 no longer works on Linux systems.
It used to work perfectly in 6.5.x, but after the 6.6.x rebuild, about:support now reports both “AAC: Unsupported” and “H.264: Unsupported”.
This means that sites like TV2 Play, Bitmovin demos, and various news portals no longer have sound or video, even though YouTube (Opus/Vorbis) still works fine.
🧩 Technical details
media.libavcodec.allow-obsoleteor adjustingLD_LIBRARY_PATHno longer makes a difference.libavcodec.so.62) is installed system-wide and works fine with Firefox and LibreWolf.⚙️ Expected behavior
Waterfox should detect and use system FFmpeg libraries on Linux, as Firefox and LibreWolf do.
This ensures support for AAC/H.264 playback without bundling proprietary codecs directly.
🧪 Environment
/usr/lib/libavcodec.so.62)🔁 Steps to reproduce
about:support→ “AAC: Unsupported”✅ Suggested fix
Please restore or re-enable system FFmpeg integration (
--enable-ffmpeg) in the Linux builds.If licensing concerns are the reason it was disabled, perhaps offer a “Full Codec” Linux build for users who already have FFmpeg installed system-wide.
This small change would restore full functionality for legitimate streaming services and align Waterfox with how Firefox handles codec support.
Thank you for considering this!
Reproducible?
Version
6.6.4-1
What platform are you seeing the problem on?
Linux